Reversing the terms of the adage _nihil volitum quin praecognitum_, I
have told you that _nihil cognitum quin praevolitum_, that we know
nothing save what we have first, in one way or another, desired; and it
may even be added that we can know nothing well save what we love, save
what we pity.
As love grows, this restless yearning to pierce to the uttermost and to
the innermost, so it continually embraces all that it sees, and pities
all that it embraces. According as you turn inwards and penetrate more
deeply into yourself, you will discover more and more your own
emptiness, that you are not all that you are not, that you are not what
you would wish to be, that you are, in a word, only a nonentity. And in
touching your own nothingness, in not feeling your permanent base, in
not reaching your own infinity, still less your own eternity, you will
have a whole-hearted pity for yourself, and you will burn with a
sorrowful love for yourself--a love that will consume your so-called
self-love, which is merely a species of sensual self-delectation, the
self-enjoyment, as it were, of the flesh of your soul.
Spiritual self-love, the pity that one feels for oneself, may perhaps be
called egotism; but nothing could be more opposed to ordinary egoism.
For this love or pity for yourself, this intense despair, bred of the
consciousness that just as before you were born you were not, so after
your death you will cease to be, will lead you to pity--that is, to
love--all your fellows and brothers in this world of appearance, these
unhappy shadows who pass from nothingness to nothingness, these sparks
of consciousness which shine for a moment in the infinite and eternal
darkness.
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