Chapter XVIII (part 8)

There can be pure sympathy, and there can be sympathy mixed with calculation to receive something for one's sympathy. There can be pure love of knowledge, a thirst for knowledge for its own sake, and there can be an inclination to knowledge wherein considerations of utility or profit assume the chief importance. In their outer manifestation pure and impure emotions may differ very little. Two men may be playing chess, acting outwardly very similarly, but in one will burn self-love, desire of victory, and he will be full of different unpleasant feelings toward his rival—fear, envy of a clever move, spite, jealousy, animosity, or schemes to win, while the other will simply solve a complex mathematical problem which lies before him, not thinking about his rival at all. The emotion of the first man will be impure, if only because it contains much of the mixed. The emotion of the second will be pure. The meaning of this is of course perfectly clear. Examples of a similar division of outwardly similar emotions may be constantly seen in the esthetic, literary, scientific, public and even the spiritual and religious activities of men. In all regions of this activity only complete victory over the pseudo-personal elements leads a man to the correct understanding of the world and of himself. All emotions colored by such SELF-ELEMENTS p. 225 are like concave, convex, or otherwise curved glasses which refract rays incorrectly and distort the image of the world. Therefore the problem of emotional knowledge consists in a corresponding preparation of the emotions which serve as organs of knowledge. Become as little children . . . and Blessed are the pure in heart. . . . In these evangelical words is expressed first of all the idea of the purification of the emotions. It is impossible to know through impure emotions. Therefore in the interests of a correct understanding of the world and of the self, man should undertake the purification and the elevation of his emotions. This last leads to an entirely new view of morality . That morality the aim of which is to establish a system of correct relations toward the emotions, and to assist in their purification and elevation, ceases in our eyes to be some wearisome and self-limiting exercise in virtue. Morality—this is a form of esthetics. That which is not moral is first of all not beautiful, because not concordant, not harmonious. We see all the enormous meaning that morality may have in our life; we see the meaning morality has for knowledge , for the reason that there are emotions by which we know , and there are emotions by which we delude ourselves. If morality can actually help us to analyze these, then its value is indisputable from the standpoint of knowledge. Current popular psychology knows very well that malice, hatred, anger, jealousy BLIND a man, DARKEN his reason; it knows that fear DRIVES ONE INSANE, etc., etc. But we also know that every emotion may serve either knowledge or nescience. Let us consider such an emotion—valuable and capable of high development—as the pleasure of activity . This emotion is a powerful motive force in culture, and of service in the perfection of life and in the evolution of all higher faculties of man. But it is also the cause of an infinite number of his delusions and faux pas for which he afterwards pays bitterly. In the passion of activity man is easily inclined to forget the aim that started him to act; to accept p. 226 the activity itself for the aim and even to sacrifice the aim in order to preserve the activity. This is seen with especial clearness in the activity of various spiritual movements. Man, starting out in one direction, turns in the opposite one without himself noticing it, and often descends into the abyss thinking that he is scaling the heights. There is nothing more contradictory, more paradoxical than the man who is enticed away by activity .