THE JUDGE AND EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES.--"One should behave as a man of honour even towards the devil and pay his debts," said an old soldier, when the story of Faust had been related to him in rather fuller detail. "Hell is the right place for Faust!" "You are terrible, you men!" cried his wife; "how can that be? After all, his only fault was having no ink in his ink-stand! It is indeed a sin to write with blood, but surely for that such a handsome man ought not to burn in Hell-fire?"
PROBLEM OF THE DUTY OF TRUTH.--Duty is an imperious sentiment that forces us to action. We call it good, and consider it outside the pale of discussion. The origin, limits, and justification of duty we will not debate or allow to be debated. But the thinker considers everything an evolution and every evolution a subject for discussion, and is accordingly without duty so long as he is merely a thinker. As such, he would not recognise the duty of seeing and speaking the truth; he would not _feel_ the sentiment at all. He asks, whence comes it and whither will it go? But even this questioning appears to him questionable. Surely, however, the consequence would be that the thinker's machinery would no longer work properly if he could really feel himself unencumbered by duty in the search for knowledge? It would appear, then, that for fuel the same element is necessary as must be investigated by means of the machine.--Perhaps the formula will be: granted there were a duty of recognising truth, what is then the truth in regard to every other kind of duty?--But is not a hypothetical sense of duty a contradiction in terms?
GRADES OF MORALS.--Morality is primarily a means of preserving the community and saving it from destruction. Next it is a means of maintaining the community on a certain plane and in a certain degree of benevolence. Its motives are fear and hope, and these in a more coarse, rough, and powerful form, the more the propensity towards the perverse, one-sided, and personal still persists. The most terrible means of intimidation must be brought into play so long as milder forms have no effect and that twofold species of preservation cannot be attained. (The strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a hell everlasting.) For this purpose we must have racks and torturers of the soul. Further grades of morality, and accordingly means to the end referred to, are the commandments of a God (as in the Mosaic law). Still further and higher are the commandments of an absolute sense of duty with a "Thou shalt"--all rather roughly hewn yet _broad_ steps, because on the finer, narrower steps men cannot yet set their feet. Then comes a morality of inclination, of taste, finally of insight--which is beyond all the illusory motives of morality, but has convinced itself that humanity for long periods could be allowed no other.