To the first of these it pays usually insufficient attention, because no open conflicts arise between them. This adversary does, nevertheless, obstruct it imperceptibly. There is, however, a wide field which our ethic can take [pg 254] possession of without any collision with the troops of egoism. Man can accomplish much that is good, without having to require of himself any sacrifice. And if there really goes with it a bit of his life, it is something so insignificant that he feels it no more than if he were losing a hair or a piece of dead skin. Over wide stretches of conduct the inward liberation from the world, the being true to oneself, the being different from the world, yes, and even devotion to other life, is only a matter of giving attention to this particular relation. We fall short so much, because we do not keep ourselves up to it. We do not stand sufficiently under the pressure of any inward compulsion to be ethical. The steam hisses at all points out of the leaky boiler. The resulting losses of energy are as high as they are in ordinary ethics, because these ethics have at their disposal no single basic principle of the moral which works upon thought. They cannot repair the boiler; they do not, indeed, ever even examine it. Reverence for life, however, being something which is ever present to thought, penetrates unceasingly and in all directions men’s observation, reflexion, and resolutions. A man can keep himself clear of it as little as the water can prevent itself from being coloured by the dye-stuff which is dropped into it. The struggle with thoughtlessness is started, and is always advancing. But what is the relation between ethics and reverence for life in the conflicts which arise between inward compulsion to devotion, and necessary self-assertion? I too am subject to division of my will-to-life against itself. In a thousand ways my existence stands in conflict with that of others. The necessity to destroy and to injure life is imposed upon me. If I walk along an unfrequented path, my foot brings destruction and pain upon the tiny creatures which populate it. In order to preserve my own existence, I must defend myself against the existence which injures it. I become a hunter of the mouse which inhabits my house, a murderer of the insect which wants to have its nest there, a mass-murderer of the bacteria which [pg 255] may endanger my life. I get my food by destroying plants and animals. My happiness is built upon injury done to my fellow-men. How does our ethic assert itself in the tragic necessity to which I am subjected through the division of my will-to-live against itself?