Part 1
Part One is kind of a short prelude to the next three
longer parts; but full of interesting considerations: Pain and despair are
always hovering in the background of our lives; we ourselves are the cause of
this pain and suffering, albeit unconsciously so; we need to regulate our inner
life in order to manage these pains (an anticipation of modern psychology);
pain can be used for purposes of healing and harming; we are constantly waging
an inner battle between pleasure and pain, at one level; but in reality pleasure
and pain are co-rulers, so at a deeper level, the pain we experience is
self-inflicted and voluntary; this raises the question as to why we do so, the
answer being that it is part of the trial and error learning process of
balancing pleasure and pain.
"LOOK into the deep heart of life,
whence pain comes to darken men's lives. She is always on the threshold, and
behind her stands despair.
What are these
two gaunt figures, and why are they permitted to be our constant followers?
It is we who
permit them, we who order them, as we permit and order the action of our
bodies; and we do so as unconsciously. But by scientific experiment and investigation
we have learned much about our physical life, and it would seem as if we can
obtain at least as much result with regard to our inner life by adopting
similar methods.
Pain arouses,
softens, breaks, and destroys. Regarded from a sufficiently removed standpoint,
it appears as medicine, as a knife, as a weapon, as a poison, in turn. It is an
implement, a thing which is used, evidently. What we desire to discover is, who
is the user; what part of ourselves is it that demands the presence of this
thing so hateful to the rest?
Medicine is
used by the physician, the knife by the surgeon; but the weapon of destruction
is used by the enemy, the hater.
Is it, then,
that we do not only use means, or desire to use means, for the benefit of our
souls, but that also we wage warfare within ourselves, and do battle in the
inner sanctuary? It would seem so; for it is certain that if man's will relaxed
with regard to it he would no longer retain life in that state in which pain
exists. Why does he desire his own hurt?
The answer may
at first sight seem to be that he primarily desires pleasure, and so is willing
to continue on that battlefield where it wages war with pain for the possession
of him, hoping always that pleasure will win the victory and take him home to
herself. This is but the external aspect of the man's state. In himself he
knows well that pain is co-ruler with pleasure, and that though the war wages
always it never will be won. The superficial observer concludes that man
submits to the inevitable. But that is a fallacy not worthy of discussion. A
little serious thought shows us that man does not exist at all except by
exercise of his positive qualities; it is but logical to suppose that he
chooses the state he will live in by the exercise of those same qualities.
Granted, then,
for the sake of our argument, that he desires pain, why is it that he desires
anything so annoying to himself?”
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