"Let God do it all," someone will say; but if man folds his arms, God
will go to sleep.
This Carthusian ethic and that scientific ethic which is derived from
ethical science--oh, this science of ethics! rational and rationalistic
ethics! pedantry of pedantry, all is pedantry!--yes, this perhaps is
egoism and coldness of heart.
There are some who say that they isolate themselves with God in order
that they may the better work out their salvation, their redemption; but
since sin is collective, redemption must be collective also. "The
religious is the determination of the whole, and everything outside this
is an illusion of the senses, and that is why the greatest criminal is
at bottom innocent, a good-natured man and a saint" (Kierkegaard,
_Afsluttende_, etc., ii., ii., cap. iv., sect. 2, _a_).
Are we to understand, on the other hand, that men seek to gain the
other, the eternal life, by renouncing this the temporal life? If the
other life is anything, it must be a continuation of this, and only as
such a continuation, more or less purified, is it mirrored in our
desire; and if this is so, such as is this life of time, so will be the
life of eternity.
"This world and the other are like the two wives of one husband--if he
pleases one he makes the other envious," said an Arab thinker, quoted by
Windelband (_Das Heilige_, in vol. ii. of _Praeludien_); but such a
thought could only have arisen in the mind of one who had failed to
resolve the tragic conflict between his spirit and the world in a
fruitful warfare, a practical contradiction.
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