The ethic of resignation. An ethic of veracity towards oneself, and an activist ethic The ethic of reverence for life shows its truth also in that it includes in itself the different elements of ethics in their natural connexion. Hitherto no ethic has been able to present in their parallelism and their interaction the effort after self-perfecting, in which man acts upon himself from outside without deeds, and the activist ethic. The ethic of reverence for life can do this, and indeed in such a way that it not only answers academic questions, but also produces a deepening of ethical insight. Ethics are reverence for the will-to-live within me and without me. From the former comes first the profound life-affirmation of resignation. I apprehend my will-to-live as not only something which can live itself out in happy occurrences, but also something which has experience of itself. If I refuse to let this self-experience disappear in thoughtlessness, and persist in feeling it to be valuable, I begin to learn the secret of spiritual self-assertion. I win an unsuspected freedom from the various destinies of life. At moments in which I had expected to find myself overwhelmed, I find myself exalted in an inexpressible and surprising happiness of freedom from the world, and I experience therein a clearing of my life-view. Resignation is the vestibule through which we enter ethics. Only he who in deepened devotion to his own will-to-live experiences inward freedom from outward occurrences, is capable of devoting himself in profound and steady fashion to the life of others. Just as in the reverence for my own will-to-live I struggle for freedom from the destinies of life, so I struggle too for freedom from myself. Not only in face of what happens to me, but also with attention to the way in which I deal with the world, I practise the higher self-maintenance. Out of reverence for my own existence I place myself under the compulsion of veracity towards myself. Everything [pg 252] I acquired would be purchased too dearly by action in defiance of my convictions. I fear that if I were untrue to myself I should be wounding my will-to-live with a poisoned spear. The fact that Kant makes, as he does, veracity towards oneself the centre point of his ethic, testifies to the depth of his ethical feeling. But because in his search for the essential nature of the ethical he fails to find his way through to reverence for life, he cannot comprehend the connexion between veracity towards oneself and an activist ethic. As a matter of fact the ethic of veracity towards oneself passes imperceptibly into that of devotion to others. Such veracity compels me to actions which manifest themselves as devotion in such a way that ordinary ethics derive them from devotion.