For Those Who Sincerely Seek The Truth

To Affirm Life Is To Deepen, To Make More Inward, And To Exalt The Will-to-life. At The Same Time The Man Who Has Become A Thinking Being Feels A Compulsion To Give Every Will-to-live The Same Reverence For Life That He Gives To His Own. He Experiences That Other Life As His Own. He Accepts As Being Good: To Preserve Life, To Raise To Its Highest Value Life Which Is Capable Of Development; And As Being Evil: To Destroy Life, To Injure Life, To Repress Life Which Is Capable Of Development. This Is The Absolute, Fundamental Principle Of The Moral, And It Is A Necessity Of Thought.

I Do Not Want To Frighten You By Telling You About The Temptations Life Will Bring. Anyone Who Is Healthy In Spirit Will Overcome Them. But There Is Something I Want You To Realize. It Does Not Matter So Much What You Do. What Matters Is Whether Your Soul Is Harmed By What You Do. If Your Soul Is Harmed, Something Irreparable Happens, The Extent Of Which You Won't Realize Until It Will Be Too Late.

I Can Do No Other Than Be Reverent Before Everything That Is Called Life. I Can Do No Other Than To Have Compassion For All That Is Called Life. That Is The Beginning And The Foundation Of All Ethics.

Ethics Is In Its Unqualified Form Extended Responsibility With Regard To Everything That Has Life.

Late On The Third Day, At The Very Moment When, At Sunset, ..., There Flashed Upon My Mind, Unforeseen And Unsought, The Phrase “ehrfurcht Vor Dem Leben” (“reverence For Life”).