Intuitive Thinking As a Spiritual Path

216 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path

give up the struggle. Every living creature seeks nourish-
ment until lack of nourishment destroys its life. Human
beings, too, only take their own lives if they believe
(rightly or wrongly) that the goals of life worth striving
for are unattainable. As long as we believe in the possi-
bility of achieving what seems to us to be worth striving
for, we will struggle against all torment and pain. Philos-
ophy would have to convince us that wanting makes
sense only if the pleasure is greater than the pain; by na-
ture, we want to achieve the objects of our desire if only
we can bear the necessary pain, however great it might
be. But such philosophy would be in error, because it
makes human will dependent on a circumstance (surplus
of pleasure over pain) that is originally foreign to us. The
original measure of our will is desire, and desire asserts
itself as long as it can.
The calculation of the pleasure and pain of satisfying a
desire that is set up bylife—not by rational philosophy—
can be looked at in the following way. Suppose that,
when buying a certain quantity of apples, I am obliged to
take twice as many bad apples as good ones, because the
seller wants to unload his merchandise. If the value I
place on the smaller quantity of good apples is so high
that, in addition to the purchase price, I am willing to as-
sume the cost of disposing of the bad apples, then I will
not hesitate for a moment to take the bad apples. This ex-
ample illustrates the relationship between the quantities
of pleasure and pain coming from any of our drives. I de-
termine the value of the good apples not by subtracting
their number from that of the bad ones, but by seeing