THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL. 467
trary, virtue will show itself, not as a striving after happiness, that is, well-being and life, but as an effort in quite an opposite direction.
It follows from what has been said above, that the good is, according to its concept, (
Greek characters); thus every good is essentially relative, for its being consists in its relation to a desiring will. Absolute good is, therefore, a contradiction in terms; highest good, summum bonum, really signifies the same thing — a final satisfaction of the will, after which no new desire could arise, — a last motive, the attainment of which would afford enduring satisfaction of the will. But, according to the investigations which have already been conducted in this Fourth Book, such a consummation is not even thinkable. The will can just as little cease from willing altogether on account of some particular satisfaction, as time can end or begin; for it there is no such thing as a permanent fulfilment which shall completely and for ever satisfy its craving. It is the vessel of the Danaides; for it there is no highest good, no absolute good, but always a merely temporary good. If, however, we wish to give an honorary position, as it were emeritus, to an old expression, which from custom we do not like to discard altogether, we may, metaphorically and figuratively, call the complete self-effacement and denial of the will, the true absence of will, which alone for ever stills and silences its struggle, alone gives that contentment which can never again be disturbed, alone redeems the world, and which we shall now soon consider at the close of our whole investigation — the
morality. To the priests such confusions of conceptions are welcome, and only in consequence of them could that horrible monstrosity fanaticism arise and govern, not merely single individuals who happen to be specially perverse and bad, but whole nations, and finally embody itself in the Western world as the Inquisition (to the honour of mankind be it said that this only happened once in their history), which, according to the latest and most authentic accounts, in Madrid alone (in the rest of Spain there were many more such ecclesiastical dens of murderers) in 300 years put 300,000 human beings to a painful death at the stake on theological grounds — a fact of which every zealot ought to be reminded whenever he begins to make himself heard.
