Page 24

THE EGO AND HIS OWN

longer draws any nourishment from nature, but " lives
only on thoughts," and therefore is no longer " life,"
but--

thinking.

Yet it must not be supposed now that the ancients

were without thoughts, just as the most spiritual man
is not to be conceived of as if he could be without life.
Rather, they had their thoughts about everything,
about the world, man, the gods, etc., and showed them-
selves keenly active in bringing all this to their con-
sciousness. But they did not know thought, even
though they thought of all sorts of things and " wor-
ried themselves with their thoughts." Compare with
their position the Christian saying, " My thoughts are
not your thoughts; as the heaven is higher than the
earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts,"
and remember what was said above about our child-
thoughts.

What is antiquity seeking, then ? The true enjoy-

ment of life! You will find that at bottom it is all
the same as " the true life."

The Greek poet Simonides sings: " Health is the

noblest good for mortal man, the next to this is beauty,
the third riches acquired without guile, the fourth the
enjoyment of social pleasures in the company of young
friends." These are all good things of life, pleasures
of life. What else was Diogenes of Sinope seeking for
than the true enjoyment of life, which he discovered in
having the least possible wants ? What else Aristip-
pus, who found it in a cheery temper under all circum-
stances ? They are seeking for cheery, unclouded life-
courage, for cheeriness; they are seeking to " be of
good cheer."

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 27

The Stoics want to realize the wise man, the man

with practical philosophy, the man who knows how to

live, --

a wise life, therefore; they find him in contempt

for the world, in a life without development, without
spreading out, without friendly relations with the
world,

i. e.

in the

isolated life,

in life as life, not in life

with others; only the Stoic

lives,

all else is dead for

him. The Epicureans, on the contrary, demand a
moving life.

The ancients, as they want to be of good cheer, de-

sire good living (the Jews especially a long life,
blessed with children and goods), eudaemonia, well-
being in the most various forms. Democritus, e g.,
praises as such the " calm of the soul " in which one
" lives smoothly, without fear and without
excitement."

So what he thinks is that with this he gets on best,

provides for himself the best lot, and gets through the
world best. But as he cannot get rid of the world,--
and in fact cannot for the very reason that his whole
activity is taken up in the effort to get rid of it, that
is, in

repelling the world

(for which it is yet necessary

that what can be and is repelled should remain exist-
ing, otherwise there would no longer be anything to
repel),--he reaches at most an extreme degree of liber-
ation, and is distinguishable only in degree from the
less liberated. If he even got as far as the deadening
of the earthly sense, which at last admits only the
monotonous whisper of the word " Brahm," he never-
theless would not be essentially distinguishable from
the

sensual

man.

Even the Stoic attitude and manly virtue amounts