The Given and the Possible
The law of causation as a principle of inquiry is an excellent thing: the existing sciences afford us convincing evidence of that. But as an idea in the Platonic sense it is of little value, at times at least. The strict harmony and order of the world have fascinated many people: such giants of thought as Spinoza and Goethe paused with reverent wonder in contemplation of the great and unchangeable order of nature. Therefore they exalted necessity even to the rank of a primordial, eternal, original principle. And we must confess that Goethe’s and Spinoza’s conception of the world lives so much in each one of us that in most cases we can love and respect the world only when our souls feel in it a symmetrical harmony. Harmony seems to us at once-the highest value and the ultimate truth. It gives to the soul great peace, a stable firmness, a trust in the Creator—the highest boons accessible to mortal men, as the philosophers teach. Nevertheless, there are other yearnings. Man’s heart is suddenly possessed by a longing for the fantastic, the unforeseen, for that which cannot be foreseen. The beautiful world loves its beauty, peace of soul seems disgraceful, stability is felt as an intolerable burden. Just as a youth grown to manhood suddenly feels irritated by the bountiful tutelage of his parents, from which he has received so much, though he does not know what to do with his freedom, so is a man of insight ashamed of the happiness which is given to him, which some one has created. The law of causation, like the whole harmony of the world, seems to him a pleasant gift, facilitating life, but yet a degrading one. He has sold his birthright for peace, for undisturbed happiness—his great birthright of free creation. He does not understand how a giant like Goethe could have been seduced by the temptation of a pleasant life, he suspects the sincerity of Spinoza. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark. The apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, has become to him the sole purpose of life, even though the path to it should lie through extreme suffering.
And, strangely, nature herself seems to be preoccupied in urging man to that fatal path. There comes a time in our life when some imperative and secret voice forbids us to rejoice at the beauty and grandeur of the world. The world allures us as before, but it no longer gives pure happiness. Remember Tchekhov. How he loved nature! What immeasurable yearning is audible in his wonderful descriptions of nature! Just as though each time that he glanced at the blue sky, the troubled sea or the green woods, a voice of authority whispered to him: ‘All this is yours no longer. You may look at it, but you have no right to rejoice. Prepare yourself for another life, where nothing will be given, complete, prepared, where nothing will be created, where there will be illimitable creation alone. And everything which is in this world shall be given to destruction, to destruction and destruction, even this nature which you so passionately love, and which it is so hard and painful for you to renounce.’ Everything drives us to the mysterious realm of the eternally fantastic, eternally chaotic, and—who knows?—it may be, the eternally beautiful....