European thought is characterised by almost always playing in the upper octaves, and not in the lower ones. Its ethic has no bass because the ethic of resignation plays no part in it. An ethic of duty, that is an activist ethic, appears to it to be a complete one. It is because he is a representative of the ethic of resignation that Spinoza remains such a stranger to his own age. Inability to understand resignation and the relations prevailing between ethics and resignation, is the fatal weakness of modern European thought. In what, then, does a complete ethic consist? In an ethic of passive self-perfecting, together with one of active self-perfecting. The ethic which is established from the standpoint of society is a supplementary one which has to be corrected by that of active self-perfecting. In view of that fact, a complete ethic must be put forward in a shape which compels it to seek to come to terms with the ethic of society. [pg 232] CHAPTER XX THE ETHIC OF DEVOTION AND THE ETHIC OF SELF-PERFECTING The widening of the ethic of self-devotion into a cosmic ethic BEING sufficiently informed about the questions which have called for solution and the results attained in the search for an ethic down to the present time, the ethic of self-devotion and that of self-perfecting can now try to combine their ideas, with a view to establishing together the true basic principle of the moral. Why do they not succeed in combining their ideas? On the side of the ethic of self-devotion the fault must somehow lie in the fact that it is too narrow. As a matter of principle social utilitarianism is concerned only with the relations of man to man and to human society. The ethic of self-perfecting on the other hand is something universal. It has to do with the relation of man to the world. If the ethic of self-devotion, therefore, wishes to agree with that of self-perfecting, it must become, like the latter, universal, and let its devotion be directed not only towards man and society but somehow or other towards all life whatever in the world. But ethics hitherto have been unwilling to take even the first step in this universalizing of devotion. Just as the housewife who has scrubbed out the parlour, takes care that the door is left shut so that the dog may not get in and spoil the work she has done by the marks of his paws, so do European thinkers watch carefully that no animals run about in the fields of their ethics. The stupidities they are guilty of in trying to maintain the traditional narrow-mindedness and to raise it to a principle [pg 233] border on the incredible. Either they leave out altogether all sympathy for animals, or they take care that it shrinks to a mere afterthought which means nothing. If they admit anything more than that, they think themselves obliged to produce elaborate justifications, or even excuses, for so doing.