"Why was this German Buddhist not endowed with Haber's cheerful
activity? What an ideal and crowning flower of manhood would he not
have been if he had not only thought but acted! But am I not
desiring the impossible? Does not the one nature preclude the other?
I fear so. In order to attack unconcernedly that which lies nearest
to us, we must be unable to see beyond, like the bull charging at
the red cloak. He would not do it, if behind the red rag, he saw the
man with the sword, and behind the man with the sword the thousand
spectators who will not leave the arena till the sharp steel has
pierced his heart. He who sees or divines behind the nearest objects
their distant causes, paralyzed by the vision of the endless chain
of cause and effect, loses the courage to act. And inversely, to
retain that courage, to strive with pleasure and zeal after earthly
things, one must make use of the world and its ordinances, must move
the pieces on the chess-board of life with patience, and, according
to its puerile rules, attach importance to much that is narrow and
paltry, and that is what, in his superior wisdom, the sage will not
stoop to do.
"I always come back to this thought. If the world consisted entirely
of Habers the earth would flourish and blossom, there would be
abundance of food and money, but our life would be like that of the
beasts of the field that graze and are happy when they chew the cud.
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