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Nordau, Max Simon, 1849-1923

"The Malady of the Century"

' But in the same measure that he transcends his
limitation, the circle of his interest is widened; more actualities
and existing phenomena are admitted, and come into sympathy with
himself. All things mingle with and extend his own 'ego;' and that
can be so widened as to embrace the interests of the whole world,
until man can be in as much sympathy with a grain of sand, or the
most distant star, and take as much share in the ant, and in the
dwellers on Saturn, as in his own stomach and toes. In this way the
whole universe becomes a constituent part of his 'ego;' thus his
desires cease individually to exist, and are assimilated with the
entire phenomenal world, and he longs for nothing beyond this. The
'ego' ceases because nothing is left outside the individual 'ego;'
but this Nirvana, this highest step in the perfection of humanity,
is, as you can see, not the negation of everything, but the
absorption of everything; not something immovable, but rather the
wonderful, ceaseless movement of the world's life. Men will not
attain to Nirvana through quiet and indifference, but through
strenuous labor, not by withdrawing into their 'ego,' but by going
outside it. The true Nirvana of the pandits is the exact opposite of
your Schopenhauer's Nirvana.


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