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He renounced his pension, and sitting at the abstemious table with the monks, declined seeing any other company than that of the world-renouncing priests and friars around him. He scourged himself with the most cruel severity, till his back was lacerated with the whip. He whole soul seemed to crave suffering, in expiation for his sins.
Our rapidly growing present-day conception of Christianity makes it not world-renouncing, but world-affirming. This modern conception of the function of a true and vital Christianity makes it the task of the immediate future to apply Christianity to trade, to commerce, to labour relations, to all social relations, to international relations.
Her own efforts to alter economic laws had not been successful; Marsden, Selwyn, and Godley had found the spirit of individualism too strong for them: was it not clear that the Christian's duty was to concentrate his efforts upon the development of unselfish character in both capitalist and worker; to try to hold the classes together by upholding the sacred character of the State, and the solemn responsibility of each individual for the right use of whatever property or cleverness he might possess; to warn against the dangers of wealth and also against the greed for its possession; to point to Christ and His world-renouncing example?
Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long endeavoured to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism and free it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally presented itself to this century, namely, in the form of Schopenhauer's philosophy; whoever, with an Asiatic and super-Asiatic eye, has actually looked inside, and into the most world-renouncing of all possible modes of thought beyond good and evil, and no longer like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the dominion and delusion of morality, whoever has done this, has perhaps just thereby, without really desiring it, opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal: the ideal of the most world-approving, exuberant, and vivacious man, who has not only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was and is, but wishes to have it again AS IT WAS AND IS, for all eternity, insatiably calling out da capo, not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play; and not only the play, but actually to him who requires the play and makes it necessary; because he always requires himself anew and makes himself necessary.
Sylvestre, a humble, world-renouncing Christian, sought nothing for himself, and would accept neither riches nor honors, but he remained near the throne to strengthen the young monarch in his good resolutions. There was a young man, Alexis Adachef, connected with the court who possessed a character of extraordinary nobleness and loveliness.
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