Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/460

and it may look as it likes. The same thing then takes place with regard to the second point, the (Greek characters), through which, according to his view, the Marcionites show their ingratitude towards the demiurgus ((Greek characters)) and the perversity with which they put from them all his gifts ((Greek characters)). Here now the tragic poets have preceded the Encratites (to the prejudice of their originality) and have said the same things. For since they also lament the infinite misery of existence, they have added that it is better to bring no children into such a world ; which he now again supports with the most beautiful passages, and, at the same time, accuses the Pythagoreans of having renounced sexual pleasure on this ground. But all this touches him not; he sticks to his principle that all these sin against the demiurgus, in that they teach that one ought not to marry, ought not to beget children, ought not to bring new miserable beings into the world, ought not to provide new food for death ((Greek characters) – c. 6). Since the learned Church Father thus denounces (Greek characters), he seems to have had no presentiment that just after his time the celibacy of the Christian priesthood would be more and more introduced, and finally, in the eleventh century, raised to the position of a law, because it is in keeping with the spirit of the New Testament. It is just this spirit which the Gnostics have grasped more profoundly and understood better than our Church Father, who is more Jew than Christian. The conception of the Gnostics comes out very clearly at the beginning of the ninth chapter, where the following passage is quoted from the Gospel of the Egyptians: (Greek characters)