The confusion which resulted from the two struggles for [pg 018] optimism and pessimism and for ethics not being kept distinct, has contributed almost more than anything else to prevent the thought of mankind from attaining to clarity. It was an easy mistake to make. The question whether it is to be affirmation or denial of life and the world, crops up in ethics in the same way as in the dispute between optimism and pessimism. Things which by their nature belong together feel themselves drawn together, so that optimism naturally thinks it can support itself on an affirmative ethical system, and pessimism thinks the same about a negative one. Nevertheless, the result has hitherto always been that neither of these two closely-related entities could stand firm, because neither of them chose to depend on itself alone. [pg 019] CHAPTER III THE ETHICAL PROBLEM The difficulties of ethical perception HOW came mankind to think about morality and to make progress in that sphere of thought? It is a picture of confusion that unrolls itself before the eyes of anyone who undertakes a journey through the history of man’s search for the ethical. The progress made in that sphere of thought is inexplicably slow and uncertain. That the scientific view of the world could be delayed in its rise and development is to a certain extent intelligible, for its advance depended more or less on the chance of there existing gifted observers, whose discoveries in the realm of the exact sciences and the knowledge of nature was needed first, to provide new horizons and to point out new paths for thought. But in ethics thought is thrown back entirely on itself: it has to do only with man himself and his self-development, which goes on by a process of causation from within. Why, then, does it not make better progress? Just because man himself is the material which has to be investigated and moulded. Ethics and æsthetics are the step-children of philosophy. They both deal with a subject which is coy about submitting itself to reflexion, for they both treat of spheres in which man exercises his purely creative activities. In science man observes and describes the course of nature, and tries to penetrate its mysteries. In practical matters he uses and moulds it by applying what he has grasped of it outside his own person. But in his moral and artistic activities he uses knowledge and obeys impulses, [pg 020] perceptions, and laws which originate in himself. To establish these firmly and to create ideals from them is an undertaking which can be successful to a certain extent only. Thought lags behind the material on which it exercises itself.