THREE PARABLES AND
A DISSERTATION
as unnatural to me. True morality, I should think, is so simple and
obvious that even a child must be aware of it, yet it is at no point
apparent; it does not obtrude here rather than there, for if the whole
world be moral, there is no reason why one part of it should engage
the attention instead of another. Fish swim in the water, but no
one says, "Look,
that
fish is swimming in the water!"
Then the parables, one, two, and three, should be sufficient to
themselves without a moral-which satisfies my own requirement.
But what's left over, the problem, if you will-left over, because
writing itself has nothing to do with problems-is still of interest
to me.
If
embarrassment with morality be health, I should like to
sound it;
if
it be paralysis of the faculty, then I must know how
and why I am affected. I don't know where to begin, and I doubt
my own capacity for system, but I shall put down
a,
b,
c,
and
d,
to
spare others what I can of my own confusion.
a.
THE HORSE
The horse has decided that life is not worth living in his con–
dition. He has discovered a freedom greater than it is his nature to
exercise; which is to say, greater than the freedom of instinct. This
very discovery discloses to him that he is not free. Why, then, here's
a moral: "One may have only the freedom of his own nature."
But I should say just the opposite is true: for what is freedom if
we do not, in winning it, discover both the limit of our own nature
and what lies beyond it? We need only indulge ourselves to be free
within our own limit-but that's no problem, no freedom and no
morality. The problem is rather, how shall we be free without self–
indulgence? Then we must transcend our limit. But how shall we
transcend it? for the limit is real. Here cuts the double edge of free–
dom with its terrible, excellent sharpness: one edge toward ourselves
-how sharp the limit is !-and the other, more terrible, away from
us-what a deep cut we have taken of the impossible! Sheathe either
edge and you are defeated. Without the wound of the limit, you
would cut without blood; it is idealism, in the disgraceful sense, to
believe in a freedom without limit, it is unreality and cowardice.
Sheathe the outer edge and you have a worse cowardice, called
determinism, but actually, contentment with things as they are,
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