That is the problem at which the ethical searching of all peoples and all ages vainly toils, so far as it ventures to think in the spirit of true nature philosophy. With the Chinese and the Indians, in Stoicism, with Spinoza, Schleiermacher, Fichte, and Hegel, and in all mysticism of union with the Absolute, it reaches only an ethic of resignation, consisting of inward liberation from the world, never at the same time an ethic of working in the world and upon the world. It is true that it only seldom ventures honestly to admit to itself the unsatisfactory result. As a rule it seeks to widen it, and to maintain in some measure an activist ethic in spite of it, letting this ethic be combined in some form or other with the ethic of resignation. The more [pg 238] consistent the thinkers, the more modest is the space occupied by the piece thus hooked on. With Lao-tse and Chwang-tse, with the Brahmans and the Buddha, with the Stoics of antiquity, with Spinoza, Schleiermacher, and Hegel, and with the great monist mystics the activist ethic is reduced to little more than nothing. With Confucius and Meng-tse, with the Hindoo thinkers, with the representatives of the Later Stoicism, and with J. G. Fichte it makes strenuous efforts to assert itself, but it can do so only so far as it takes either naïve or sophisticated thought to help it. Every world-and-life-view which is to satisfy thought is mysticism. It must seek to give to the existence of man such a meaning as will prevent him from being satisfied with being a part of the infinite existence in merely natural fashion, but will make him determine to belong to it inwardly and spiritually also, through an act of his consciousness. The ethic of self-perfecting is in inmost connexion with mysticism. Its own destiny is decided in that of mysticism. Thinking out the ethic of self-perfecting means nothing else than seeking to found ethics on mysticism. Mysticism, on its side, is a valuable world-and-life-view only in proportion as it is ethical. And yet it finds it cannot succeed in being ethical. Experience of becoming one with the Absolute, of existence within the world-spirit, of ascent into God, or whatever one may choose to call the process, is not in itself ethical; it is only spiritual. Of this deep distinction Indian thought has become conscious. With the most varied phrasing it proclaims the statement: “Spirituality is not ethics.” We Europeans have remained naïve in matters of mysticism. What appears among us as mysticism is usually mysticism with a more or less Christian, that is to say ethical, colouring. Hence we are inclined to deceive ourselves about the ethical content of mysticism.