THERE are two things which thought has to do for us; it must lead us up out of the naïve world- and life-affirmation to a deepened one, and it must let us go on from mere ethical impulses to an ethic which is a necessity of thought. Deepened world- and life-affirmation consists in this, that we have the will to maintain our own life and every kind of existence that we can in any way influence, and to bring them to their highest value. It demands from us that we think out all ideals of the material and spiritual perfecting of individual men, of society, and of mankind as a whole, and let ourselves be determined by them to steady activity and steady hope. It does not allow us to withdraw into ourselves, but orders us to bring to bear a living and so far as possible an active interest on everything which happens around us. To endure a state of unrest through our relation to the world, when by withdrawing into ourselves we might enjoy rest; that is the burden which deeper world- and life-affirmation lays upon us. We begin our life-course in an unsophisticated world- and life-affirmation. The will-to-live which is in us gives it to us as something which is a matter of course. But later, when thought awakes, the questions crop up which make a problem of what has hitherto been a matter of course. What meaning will you give your life? What do you mean to do in the world? When, along with these [pg 213] questions, we begin trying to reconcile knowledge and will-to-live, facts get in the way of this with confusing suggestions. Life attracts us, they say, with a thousand expectations, and fulfils hardly one of them. And the fulfilled expectation is almost a disappointment, for only anticipated pleasure is really pleasure; in pleasure which is fulfilled its opposite is already stirring. Unrest, disappointment, and pain are our lot in the short span of time which lies between our entrance on life and our departure from it. The spiritual is in a dreadful state of dependence on the bodily. Our existence is at the mercy of meaningless happenings and can be brought to an end by them at any moment. The will-to-live gives me an impulse to action, but the action is just as if I wanted to plough the sea, and to sow in the furrows. What did those who worked before me effect? What significance in the endless chain of world-happenings have their efforts had? With all its illusive promises the will-to-live only means to mislead me into prolonging my existence, and allowing to enter on existence, so that the game may go on without interruption, other beings to whom the same miserable lot has been assigned as to myself. The discoveries in the field of knowledge against which the will-to-live knocks when it begins to think, are therefore altogether pessimistic. It is not by accident that all religious world-views, except the Chinese, have a more or less pessimistic tone and bid man expect nothing from his existence here.