THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
tion of the will the entirety* of religion, and preaches Nirvana as the goal
of all personal development. The Hindus were deeper than the thinkers
of Europe, because their interpretation of the world was internal and
intuitive, not external and intellectual; the intellect divides everything,
intuition unites even-thing; the Hindus saw that the "I" is a delusion;
that the individual is merely phenomenal, and that the only reality is the
Infinite One "That art thou." "Whoever is able to say this to himself,
with regard to every being with whom he comes in contact," whoever is
clear-eyed and clear-souled enough to see that we are all members of one
organism, all of us little currents in an ocean of will, he "is certain of all
virtue and blessedness, and is on the direct road to salvation." 131 Schopenhauer
does not think that Christianity will ever displace Buddhism in the
East: "it is just the same as if we fired a bullet against a cliff." 138 Rather,
Indian philosophy streams into Europe, and will profoundly alter our
knowledge and our thought. "The influence of the Sanskrit literature will
penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek letters in the
fifteenth century." 189
The ultimate wisdom, then, is Nirvana: to reduce one's self to a
minimum of desire and will. The world-will is stronger than ours; let us
yield at once. "The less the will is excited, the less we suffer.5 '140 The
great masterpieces of painting have always represented countenances in
which "we see the expression of the completest knowledge, which is not
directed to particular things, but has . . . become the quieter of all
calm of the
will/* 141 "That peace which is above all reason, that perfect
spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence and serenity, ... as
Raphael and Correggio have represented it, is an entire and certain
gospel; only knowledge remains, the will has vanished." 142
VII. THE WISDOM OF DEATH
And yet, something more is needed. By Nirvana the individual achieves
the peace of will-lessnesa, and finds salvation; but after the individual?
Life laughs at the death of the individual; it will survive him in his offspring,
or in the offspring of others; even if his little stream of life runs
dry there are a thousand other streams that grew broader and deeper
with every generation. How can Man be saved? Is there a Nirvana for
the race as well as for the individual?
Obviously, the only final and radical conquest of the will must lie in
stopping up the source of life the will to reproduce. **The satisfaction
of the reproductive impulse is utterly and intrinsically reprehensible be-
""1,460.
**% we are w
rylair faith
and MaTfms,** p. 19.
xiii. Perhaps we are witnessing a fulfillment of tLis prophecy in the growth
of theosophy and irrylair faiths.