The evil of suffering is cured by more suffering, by higher suffering.
Do not take opium, but put salt and vinegar in the soul's wound, for
when you sleep and no longer feel the suffering, you are not. And to be,
that is imperative. Do not then close your eyes to the agonizing Sphinx,
but look her in the face and let her seize you in her mouth and crunch
you with her hundred thousand poisonous teeth and swallow you. And when
she has swallowed you, you will know the sweetness of the taste of
suffering.
The way thereto in practice is by the ethic of mutual imposition. Men
should strive to impose themselves upon one another, to give their
spirits to one another, to seal one another's souls.
There is matter for thought in the fact that the Christian ethic has
been called an ethic of slaves. By whom? By anarchists! It is anarchism
that is an ethic of slaves, for it is only the slave that chants the
praises of anarchical liberty. Anarchism, no! but _panarchism_; not the
creed of "Nor God nor master!" but that of "All gods and all masters!"
all striving to become gods, to become immortal, and achieving this by
dominating others.
And there are so many ways of dominating. There is even a passive way,
or one at least that is apparently passive, of fulfilling at times this
law of life. Adaptation to environment, imitation, putting oneself in
another's place, sympathy, in a word, besides being a manifestation of
the unity of the species, is a mode of self-expansion, of being another.
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