Prolegomena to in Memoriam (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Prolegomena to in Memoriam Out Of original character, instruction, and experience every human being builds up his own moral world, an ideal order Of things which imparts to his actions whatever ration ality and aim they may possess. Upon the world thus created everything in his life de pends, his Optimism or pessimism, his happi ness or misery. If his world is rational, in Spiring faith and courage, by Offering motives for continuous, enthusiastic activity, his life, whatever may befall, is a blessed unity. If, on the contrary, his world fails to disclose any purpose, any reason why one course of action should be preferred to another, anything worthy Of supreme love and devotion, life is fragment ary, feeble, and, when temperament fails, miser able. Success in life, in the deepest sense, de pends upon his power to build up and sustain an aimful and consistent moral world. Unfortunately, such a world, even after it has been built up, may be destroyed, and no greater disaster can happen to any man.1 In such an event, the will is paralyzed, and life loses meaning and direction.2 And, since a man's moral world is the response to his whole moral nature, including three elements, insight, love, and energy, the catastrophe may come through the failure Of any one of these, that is, through doubt, widowed or blasted affection, or unavailing activity. The world Of a Faust is shattered by the first, that of a Tennyson by the second, that Of a Charles Albert by the third. A shattered moral world means a world with out rationality or aim. Now the postulates Of the reason, as Kant has shown, are God, Free dom, Immortality. Let a man doubt whether there be any moral law in the world, whether he be free to Obey such law, or whether Obedi ence to that law will result in good, and dis obedience in evil, to him, and his moral world is wrecked. Life, Offering no motive for moral action, is not worth living. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.