Note DN — Chapter XXII · THE MORAL STANDARD

The psychic bulwark, says Ch. v. Ehrenfels, against the horrors of the thought of death and against the terrors of existence can only be raised by man when he puts himself into a certain relation to the metaphysical riddles of the universe, into a relation to the contrast between the fleeting and eternal, between the movable and immovable, between the finite and the infinite. The ethical values of individual conduct may be thus characterized as those which are awakened in man, when he places himself, with his wishes and actions, before the tribunal of the eternal and inscrutable. Individual moral conduct, in contrast to social morality which is determined by the moral imperative and ethical relative values, is in this way regulated by the perennial threats of the inevitable appearance of death.

To escape from this thought the morality of love recommends the plunge into the whirl of sensual life. But at the approach of death man sees that the transitory intoxication of the senses is also pure vanity. For it is almost axiomatic among thinking men that the only way to acquire the ability to look upon the terrors of existence and the fleetingness of life with equanimity and consolation is to put their labors in such a direction, where there is hope for the continuation of their works beyond the individual existence far into the infinite, such as the artist hopes of his art, the scientist of his science, and the creative genius of his creation.