It is important, further, to know what is to be gathered from ethical inquiry down to the present time about the intensity and the extension of the life-denial which stands in the service of world-affirmation. Again and again the attempt has been made to establish this objectively. In vain! It belongs to the nature of devotion that it must live itself out subjectively and without reservations. In the history of ethics there is downright fear of what cannot be subjected to rules and regulations. Again and again thinkers have undertaken to define devotion in such a way that it remains rational. This, however, is never done except at the cost of the naturalness and living character of ethics. Life-denial remains something irrational, even when it places itself at the service of a purposive policy. A universally applicable balance between life-affirmation and life-denial cannot be established. They remain in a state of continual tension. If any relaxation does take place, it is a sign that ethics are collapsing, for in their real nature they are unbounded enthusiasm. They originate indeed in thought, but they cannot be carried through to a logical conclusion. Anyone who undertakes the voyage to a true ethic must be prepared to be carried round and round in the whirlpool of the irrational. [pg 228] The ethic of ethical personality, and the ethic of society Together with the subjectively enthusiastic nature of ethics goes the fact that it never wishes to succeed in developing the ethic of ethical personality into a serviceable ethic of society. It seems so obvious, that from right individual ethics right social ethics should result, the one continuing itself into the other like a town into its suburbs. In reality, however, they cannot be so built that the streets of the one continue as those of the other. The plans of each are drawn on principles which take no account of that. The ethic of ethical personality is personal, incapable of regulation, and absolute; that which is established by society for its own prosperous existence is supra-personal, regulated, and relative. Hence the ethical personality cannot surrender to it, but lives always in continuous disputation with it, obliged again and again to oppose it because it finds its focus too short. In the last analysis the antagonism between the two arises from their differing valuations of humaneness. Humaneness consists in this—that no human being is ever sacrificed to a purpose. The ethic of ethical personality aims at preserving humaneness. That which is established by society is impotent in that respect.