This is the transition from virtue to asceticism. A man who has reached so far ceases to will anything, he guards himself against desire, and strives to attain complete indifference to everything. He gives the lie to his own body, and no longer desires any gratification. Voluntary and complete chastity and poverty are { 86} necessary steps in this asceticism. Man is at once the priest and the sacrifice. Every kind of volition is suppressed intentionally. The body is nourished sparingly, lest its vigour and well-being should arouse the will. Every step is taken to break and destroy the will, which is recognised as the source of all suffering. Death when it comes at last is welcomed as a longed-for deliverance, and hailed with gladness.
In this picture of the life of holiness and asceticism Schopenhauer shows the strong influence which Indian philosophy had exercised upon his thought. This is the ideal life, the life of the saint, as portrayed by the early Christian mystics, and in the Indian religious books.
Virtue and holiness proceed from inward, direct and intuitive knowledge, and not from abstract knowledge, as so many earlier philosophers asserted. The chasm between the two kinds of knowledge can be bridged only by philosophy. Everyone is conscious intuitively of philosophical truths, but philosophy is necessary to bring them to abstract knowledge and reflection. Hence Schopenhauer is at enmity with all rational religion. For religion has to do primarily not with the intellect, but with the will and the feelings. He felt this so deeply that he left the rational element almost entirely out of his definition of virtue. We learn the meaning of virtue, in his view, through the sympathy, which makes us feel intuitively the underlying identity in the lives of other beings with our own life. It is possible to express abstractly the inner nature of holiness and asceticism as the denial of the will to live, but this abstract theory has been known directly, and carried into practice by countless saints and ascetics, who all possessed the same inward knowledge, though they used very different language with regard to it, { 87} according to their dogmas. Whether a saint is moved by the grossest superstition, or whether he be a philosopher, makes no difference. His conduct testifies to his saintliness, and this proceeds from an intuitive and direct realisation of the nature of the world. The dogmas he holds are merely for the satisfaction of his intellect. It is therefore not necessary that a saint should be a philosopher, just as it is not necessary that a great sculptor should be himself a beautiful man.