world is certain _only because they are
certain_. Were we to renounce the former, the world, and, with it,
ourselves, we should sink into absolute nothing. We raise ourselves
out of this nothing, and sustain ourselves above this nothing, solely
by means of our morality.

II

* * * * *

When I contemplate the world as it is, independently of any command,
there manifests itself in my interior the wish, the longing, no! not
a longing merely--the absolute demand for a better world. I cast a
glance at the relations of men to one another and to Nature, at the
weakness of their powers, at the strength of their appetites and
passions. It cries to me irresistibly from my innermost soul: "Thus it
cannot possibly be destined always to remain. It must, O it must all
become other and better!"

I can in no wise imagine to myself the present condition of man as
that which is designed to endure. I cannot imagine it to be his whole
and final destination. If so, then would everything be dream and
delusion, and it would not be worth the trouble to have lived and to
have taken part in this ever-recurring, aimless, and unmeaning game.
Only so far as I can regard this condition as the means of something
better, as a point of transition to a higher and more perfect, does
it acquire any value for me. Not on its own account, but on account of
something better for which it prepares the way, can I bear it, honor
it, and joyfully fulfil my part in it. My mind can find no place, nor
rest a moment, in the present; it is irresistibly repelled by it. My
whole life streams irrepressibly on toward the future and better.

Am I only to eat and to drink that I may hunger and thirst again,
and again eat and drink, until the grave, yawning beneath my feet,
swallows me up, and I myself spring up as food from the ground? Am I
to beget beings like myself, that they also may eat and drink and die,
and leave behind them beings like themselves, who shall do the same
that I have done? To what purpose this circle which perpetually
returns into itself; this game forever recommencing, after the same
manner, in which everything is born but to perish, and perishes but
to be born again as it was; this monster which forever devours itself
that it may produce itself again, and which produces itself that it
may again devour itself?

Never can this be the destination of my being and of all being. There
must be something which exis