(420)
CHAPTER XLVIII.[1]
ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE DENIAL OF THE WILL TO LIVE.
Man has his existence and being either with his will, i.e., his consent, or without this; in the latter case an existence so embittered by manifold and insupportable sufferings would be a flagrant injustice. The ancients, especially the Stoics, also the Peripatetics and Academics, strove in vain to prove that virtue sufficed to make life happy. Experience cried out loudly against it. What really lay at the foundation of the efforts of these philosophers, although they were not distinctly conscious of it, was the assumed justice of the thing; whoever was without guilt ought to be free from suffering, thus happy. But the serious and profound solution of the problem lies in the Christian doctrine that works do not justify. Accordingly a man, even if he has practised all justice and benevolence, consequently the (
Greek characters), honestum, is yet not, as Cicero imagines, culpa omni carens (Tusc., v. i.); but el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido (the greatest guilt of man is that he was born), as Calderon, illuminated by Christianity, has expressed it with far profounder knowledge than these wise men. Therefore that man comes into the world already tainted with guilt can appear absurd only to him who regards him as just then having arisen out of nothing and as the work of another. In consequence of this guilt, then, which must therefore have pro-
1 This chapter is connected with § 68 of the first volume. Chapter 14 of the second volume of the Parerga should also be compared with it.
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