--Is Nemesis indeed more real than Providence, the
jealous God more true than the good God? grief more certain than joy?
darkness more secure of victory than light? Is it pessimism or optimism
which is nearest the truth, and which--Leibnitz or Schopenhauer--has
best understood the universe? Is it the healthy man or the sick man who
sees best to the bottom of things? which is in the right?
Ah! the problem of grief and evil is and will be always the greatest
enigma of being, only second to the existence of being itself. The
common faith of humanity has assumed the victory of good over evil. But
if good consists not in the result of victory, but in victory itself,
then good implies an incessant and infinite contest, interminable
struggle, and a success forever threatened. And if this is life, is not
Buddha right in regarding life as synonymous with evil since it means
perpetual restlessness and endless war? Repose according to the Buddhist
is only to be found in annihilation. The art of self-annihilation, of
escaping the world's vast machinery of suffering, and the misery of
renewed existence--the art of reaching Nirvana, is to him the supreme
art, the only means of deliverance. The Christian says to God: Deliver
us from evil. The Buddhist adds: And to that end deliver us from finite
existence, give us back to nothingness! The first believes that when he
is enfranchised from the body he will enter upon eternal happiness; the
second believes that individuality is the obstacle to all repose, and he
longs for the dissolution of the soul itself.
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