And to do this is generosity, one of the two mother virtues which are born when inertia, sloth, is overcome.  Most of our miseries come from spiritual avarice.

The cure for suffering—­which, as we have said, is the collision of consciousness with unconsciousness—­is not to be submerged in unconsciousness, but to be raised to consciousness and to suffer more.  The evil of suffering is cured by more suffering, by higher suffering.  Do not take opium, but put salt and vinegar in the soul’s wound, for when you sleep and no longer feel the suffering, you are not.  And to be, that is imperative.  Do not then close your eyes to the agonizing Sphinx, but look her in the face and let her seize you in her mouth and crunch you with her hundred thousand poisonous teeth and swallow you.  And when she has swallowed you, you will know the sweetness of the taste of suffering.

The way thereto in practice is by the ethic of mutual imposition.  Men should strive to impose themselves upon one another, to give their spirits to one another, to seal one another’s souls.

There is matter for thought in the fact that the Christian ethic has been called an ethic of slaves.  By whom?  By anarchists!  It is anarchism that is an ethic of slaves, for it is only the slave that chants the praises of anarchical liberty.  Anarchism, no! but panarchism; not the creed of “Nor God nor master!” but that of “All gods and all masters!” all striving to become gods, to become immortal, and achieving this by dominating others.

And there are so many ways of dominating.  There is even a passive way, or one at least that is apparently passive, of fulfilling at times this law of life.  Adaptation to environment, imitation, putting oneself in another’s place, sympathy, in a word, besides being a manifestation of the unity of the species, is a mode of self-expansion, of being another.  To be conquered, or at least to seem to be conquered, is often to conquer; to take what is another’s is a way of living in him.

And in speaking of domination, I do not mean the domination of the tiger.  The fox also dominates by cunning, and the hare by flight, and the viper by poison, and the mosquito by its smallness, and the squid by the inky fluid with which it darkens the water and under cover of which it escapes.  And no one is scandalized at this, for the same universal Father who gave its fierceness, its talons, and its jaws to the tiger, gave cunning to the fox, swift feet to the hare, poison to the viper, diminutiveness to the mosquito, and its inky fluid to the squid.  And nobleness or ignobleness does not consist in the weapons we use, for every species and even every individual possesses its own, but rather in the way in which we use them, and above all in the cause in which we wield them.

And among the weapons of conquest must be included the weapon of patience and of resignation, but a passionate patience and a passionate resignation, containing within itself an active principle and antecedent longings.  You remember that famous sonnet of Milton—­Milton, the great fighter, the great Puritan disturber of the spiritual peace, the singer of Satan—­who, when he considered how his light was spent and that one talent which it is death to hide lodged with him useless, heard the voice of Patience saying to him,