The ethical thought of modern times is from the outset social-utilitarian. It is to it a matter of course that the individual must devote himself in every respect to his fellow-individuals, and to society. But when it tries to [pg 222] give a firm foundation to this ethic of devotion which seems to it so much a matter of course, and to think it out to a conclusion, it is driven to the most remarkable consequences, which are inconsistent with each other in the most varied directions. At one time it explains devotion as a refined egoism; at another as something which society forcibly imposes on individuals; at another as something which it develops in him by education; at another, as in Bentham, as something which he adopts as one of his convictions on the ground of the urgent representations of society; at another as an instinct which he obeys. The first assumption cannot be carried through; the second, third, and fourth are unsatisfying because they allow ethics to reach men from the outside; the last leads to a _cul-de-sac_. If, for example, devotion is an instinct, it must, of course, be made conceivable how thought can work upon it, and raise it to the level of a considered, widely inclusive, voluntary activity at which level it first becomes ethical. This, which is its peculiar problem, utilitarianism does not recognise, much less solve. It is always in too much of a hurry to come to practical results. At last it gives its bond to biology and social science, which bring it to conceiving itself as herd-mentality, wonderfully developed and capable of still further development. It thereby bring itself to a halt far below the level of real ethics. The ethic of devotion fails therefore most remarkably, although it starts from what is most elementary and essential in ethics, to shape itself in a way which satisfies thought. It is as if it had the true basic principle of ethics within its reach, yet always grasped to right or left of it. By the side of these two attempts to understand ethics as effort to procure rational pleasure, or as devotion to one’s fellow-men and to society, there is a third, which tries to explain ethics as effort after self-perfecting. This attempt has in it something abstract and venturesome. It disdains to start from a universally acknowledged content of the ethical, as utilitarianism does, and in contrast to that [pg 223] sets before thought the task of deriving the whole content of ethics from the effort after self-perfecting. Plato, the first representative in the West of the ethics of self-perfecting, and Schopenhauer try to solve the problem by setting up, as do the Indians, world- and life-denial to be the basic principle of the ethical. That, however, is no solution. World- and life-denial, if consistently thought out and carried through, does not produce an ethic but reduces ethics to impotence.