Can ethics, then, in virtue of this indisputable claim to pronounce the last word about right and wrong, really afford to dictate to the human will regardless of the warnings uttered by history. Is an ethical principle primarily something to die for rather than something to live by? Can the will of man authorize a policy of suicide without abdicating its right to a genuine freedom?
If we were, indeed, to pay exclusive attention to certain phases of the history of human morals, it might seem that, in the view of the purest ethical thought, the price of spirituality was the renunciation of the world. Such a doctrine has commanded a large measure of respect in the more advanced religions both of East and West. Philosophers, too, have upheld the same idea, whether it be Plato passionately proclaiming the euthanasia of Socrates, or Kant scholastically vindicating the rigour of the moral law. So there might seem to be nothing in common between the voice of conscience, preaching the absolute supremacy of duty, and the voice of history, prating of consequences and conditions.
It needs, however, but a modest gift of psychological insight to rid us of the paradox that moral goodness is neither of, nor for, this world of living and striving humanity. Up to a point the psychology of devotion and of obsession is the same. A certain contraction of the field of mental illumination accompanies a heightened focus of attention. It is characteristic of the mood of action no less than of the mood of detached contemplation that the consciousness concentrates on a single object. The man who is strung up to the pitch of martyrdom, be it for a good cause or for a bad, has lost the sense of his surroundings. Cost what it may, he will see this thing through. Nevertheless, it is essential that the will, thus braced and mobilized, shall concentrate on the object immediately presented. As the martyr does not look back, so neither does he look forward. He must establish his everlasting kingdom here and now.
