[1035W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 245]
[P. 245] {FEUER} {SCHOP} “If we take this great thought of our philosopher[Schopenhauer] as guide to the inexorable metaphysical problem of the purpose of the human race, we shall have to acknowledge that what we have termed the decline of the race, as known to us by its historic deeds, is really the stern school of Suffering which the Will imposed on its blind self for sake of gaining sight, somewhat in the sense of the power ‘that ever willeth ill, and ever doeth good.’ (…)
{FEUER} {SCHOP} No paradisiac ease can therefore be the final answer to theriddle of this violent stress, whose every utterance remains a source of fear and horror to our minds. Before us still will lie the same old possibilities of havoc and destruction, whereby it manifests its actual essence; our own descent from the germs of life we see the ocean's depth bring forth anew in hideous shapes, can never more be hidden from our awe-struck thought. And this human race, endowed with faculty of knowledge and of meditation, and thus of laying the Will’s tumultuous storm, -- is it not founded still, itself, on all the lower grades where incomplete attempts to gain a higher step, obstructed by mad hindrances in their own will, have stayed immutable for us to see, abhorrent or with pity?” [1035W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 245]
[1036W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 246-247]
[P. 246] {FEUER} {SCHOP} And to guard against all re-subjection to the blindfold Will, must a new religion first be founded? (…) [P. 247]
{FEUER} Well for us if then, in conscience of pure living, we keep our sensesopen to the mediator of the crushingly Sublime, and let ourselves be gently led to reconcilement with this mortal life by the artistic teller of the great World-tragedy. This Poet priest, the only one who never lied, was ever sent to humankind at epochs of its direst error, as mediating friend: us, too, will he lead over to that reborn life, to set before us there in ideal truth the ‘likeness’ of this passing show, when the Historian’s realistic lie shall have long since been interred beneath the mouldering archives of our Civilisation.” [1036W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 246-247]
[1037W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 248-249]
[P. 248] {FEUER} {anti-FEUER/NIET} “If hitherto has been a commonplace ofheartless and thoughtless minds alike, that so soon as the human race were freed from the common sufferings of a sinful life, its state would be one of dull indifference, -- whereon it is to be remarked that they consider a mere freedom from the very lowest troubles of the Will as lending life its varied charm, whilst the labours of great thinkers, poets and seers, they have always densely set aside. We on the contrary, have learnt that the life essential to us in the future can only be freed from those cares and sufferings by a conscious impulse, whereto the fearful riddle of the world is ever present. That which, as simplest and most touching of religious symbols, unites us in the common practising of our belief; that which, ever newly
