chapter 24

, from which it resulted that mere formless matter—this basis of the world of experience which is never perceived for itself alone, but assumed as constantly remaining—is the immediate reflection, the visibility in general, of the thing in itself, thus of the will. Therefore, whatever absolutely pertains to the will as such holds good also of matter, and it reflects the true eternal nature of the will under the image of temporal imperishableness. Because, as has been said, nature does not lie, no view which has sprung from a purely objective comprehension of it, and been logically thought out, can be absolutely false, but at the most only very one‐sided and imperfect. Such, however, is, indisputably, consistent materialism; for instance, that of Epicurus, just as well as the absolute idealism opposed to it, like that of Berkeley, and in general every philosophical point of view which has proceeded from a correct _apperçu_, and been honestly carried out. Only they are all exceedingly one‐sided comprehensions, and therefore, in spite of their opposition, they are all true, each from a definite point of view; but as soon as one has risen above this point of view, then they only appear as relatively and conditionally true. The highest standpoint alone, from which one surveys them all and knows them in their relative truth, but also beyond this, in their falseness, can be that of absolute truth so far as this is in general attainable. Accordingly we see, as was shown above, that in the very crude, and therefore very old, point of view of materialism proper the indestructibility of our true nature in itself is represented, as by a mere shadow of it, the imperishableness of matter; as in the already higher naturalism of an absolute physics it is represented by the ubiquity and eternity of the natural forces, among which the vital force is at least to be counted. Thus even these crude points of view contain the assertion that the living being suffers no absolute annihilation through death, but continues to exist in and with the whole of nature.

The considerations which have brought us to this point, and to which the further explanations link themselves on, started from the remarkable fear of death which fills all living beings. But now we will change the standpoint and consider how, in contrast to the individual beings, the _whole_ of nature bears itself with reference to death. In doing this, however, we still always remain upon the ground of experience.

Certainly we know no higher game of chance than that for death and life. Every decision about this we watch with the utmost excitement, interest, and fear; for in our eyes all in all is at stake. On the other hand, nature, which never lies, but is always straightforward and open, speaks quite differently upon this theme, speaks like Krishna in the Bhagavadgita. What it says is: The death or the life of the individual is of no significance. It expresses this by the fact that it exposes the life of every brute, and even of man, to the most insignificant accidents without coming to the rescue. Consider the insect on your path; a slight, unconscious turning of your step is decisive as to its life or death. Look at the wood‐snail, without any means of flight, of defence, of deception, of concealment, a ready prey for all. Look at the fish carelessly playing in the still open net; the frog restrained by its laziness from the flight which might save it; the bird that does not know of the falcon that soars above it; the sheep which the wolf eyes and examines from the thicket. All these, provided with little foresight, go about guilelessly among the dangers that threaten their existence every moment. Since now nature exposes its organisms, constructed with such inimitable skill, not only to the predatory instincts of the stronger, but also to the blindest chance, to the humour of every fool, the mischievousness of every child without reserve, it declares that the annihilation of these individuals is indifferent to it, does it no harm, has no significance, and that in these cases the effect is of no more importance than the cause. It says this very distinctly, and it does not lie; only it makes no comments on its utterances, but rather expresses them in the laconic style of an oracle. If now the all‐mother sends forth her children without protection to a thousand threatening dangers, this can only be because she knows that if they fall they fall back into her womb, where they are safe; therefore their fall is a mere jest. Nature does not act otherwise with man than with the brutes. Therefore its declaration extends also to man: the life and death of the individual are indifferent to it. Accordingly, in a certain sense, they ought also to be indifferent to us, for we ourselves are indeed nature. Certainly, if only we saw deep enough, we would agree with nature, and regard life and death as indifferently as it does. Meanwhile, by means of reflection, we must attribute that carelessness and indifference of nature towards the life of the individuals to the fact that the destruction of such a phenomenon does not in the least affect its true and proper nature.

If we further ponder the fact, that not only, as we have just seen, are life and death dependent upon the most trifling accidents, but that the existence of the organised being in general is an ephemeral one, that animal and plant arise to‐day and pass away to‐morrow, and birth and death follow in quick succession, while to the unorganised things which stand so much lower an incomparably longer duration is assured, and an infinite duration to the absolutely formless matter alone, to which, indeed, we attribute this _a priori_,—then, I think, the thought must follow of its own accord, even from the purely empirical, but objective and unprejudiced comprehension of such an order of things, that this is only a superficial phenomenon, that such a constant arising and passing away can by no means touch the root of things, but can only be relative, nay, only apparent, in which the true inner nature of that thing is not included, the nature which everywhere evades our glance and is thoroughly mysterious, but rather that this continues to exist undisturbed by it; although we can neither apprehend nor conceive the manner in which this happens, and must therefore think of it only generally as a kind of _tour de passe‐passe_ which took place there. For that, while what is most imperfect, the lowest, the unorganised, continues to exist unassailed, it is just the most perfect beings, the living creatures, with their infinitely complicated and inconceivably ingenious organisations, which constantly arise, new from the very foundation, and after a brief span of time absolutely pass into nothingness, to make room for other new ones like them coming into existence out of nothing—this is something so obviously absurd that it can never be the true order of things, but rather a mere veil which conceals this, or, more accurately, a phenomenon conditioned by the nature of our intellect. Nay, the whole being and not being itself of these individuals, in relation to which death and life are opposites, can only be relative. Thus the language of nature, in which it is given us as absolute, cannot be the true and ultimate expression of the nature of things and of the order of the world, but indeed only a _patois du pays_, _i.e._, something merely relatively true,—something to be understood _cum grano salis_, or, to speak properly, something conditioned by our intellect; I say, an immediate, intuitive conviction of the kind which I have tried to describe in words will press itself upon every one; _i.e._, certainly only upon every one whose mind is not of an utterly ordinary species, which is absolutely only capable of knowing the particular simply and solely as such, which is strictly limited to the knowledge of individuals, after the manner of the intellect of the brutes. Whoever, on the other hand, by means of a capacity of an only somewhat higher power, even just begins to see in the individual beings their universal, their Ideas, will also, to a certain extent, participate in that conviction, and that indeed as an immediate, and therefore certain, conviction. In fact, it is also only small, limited minds that fear death quite seriously as their annihilation, and persons of decidedly superior capacity are completely free from such terrors. Plato rightly bases the whole of philosophy upon the knowledge of the doctrine of Ideas, _i.e._, upon the perception of the universal in the particular. But the conviction here described, which proceeds directly from the comprehension of nature, must have been exceedingly vivid in those sublime authors of the Upanishads of the Vedas, who can scarcely be thought of as mere men, for it speaks to us so forcibly out of an innumerable number of their utterances that we must ascribe this immediate illumination of their mind to the fact that these wise men, standing nearer the origin of our race in time, comprehended the nature of things more clearly and profoundly than the already deteriorated race, ὁιοι νυν βροτοι εισιν, is able to do. But certainly their comprehension is assisted by the natural world of India, which is endowed with life in a very different degree from our northern world. However, thorough reflection, as pursued by Kant’s great mind, leads by another path to the same result, for it teaches us that our intellect, in which that phenomenal world which changes so fast exhibits itself, does not comprehend the true ultimate nature of things, but merely its phenomenal manifestation, and indeed, as I add, because it is originally only destined to present the motives to our will, _i.e._, to be serviceable to it in the pursuit of its paltry ends.

Let us, however, carry our objective and unprejudiced consideration of nature still further. If I kill a living creature, whether a dog, a bird, a frog, or even only an insect, it is really inconceivable that this being, or rather the original force by virtue of which such a marvellous phenomenon exhibited itself just the moment before, in its full energy and love of life, should have been annihilated by my wicked or thoughtless act. And again, on the other hand, the millions of animals of every kind which come into existence every moment, in infinite variety, full of force and activity, can never, before the act of their generation, have been nothing at all, and have attained from nothing to an absolute beginning. If now in this way I see one of these withdraw itself from my sight, without me knowing where it goes, and another appear without me knowing whence it comes; if, moreover, both have the same form, the same nature, the same character, and only not the same matter, which yet during their existence they continually throw off and renew; then certainly the assumption, that that which vanishes and that which appears in its place are one and the same, which has only experienced a slight alteration, a renewal of the form of its existence, and that consequently death is for the species what sleep is for the individual; this assumption, I say, lies so close at hand that it is impossible not to light upon it, unless the mind, perverted in early youth by the imprinting of false views, hurries it out of the way, even from a distance, with superstitious fear. But the opposite assumption that the birth of an animal is an arising out of nothing, and accordingly that its death is its absolute annihilation, and this with the further addition that man, who has also originated out of nothing, has yet an individual, endless existence, and indeed a conscious existence, while the dog, the ape, the elephant, are annihilated by death, is really something against which the healthy mind revolts and which it must regard as absurd. If, as is sufficiently often repeated, the comparison of the results of a system with the utterances of the healthy mind is supposed to be a touchstone of its truth, I wish the adherents of the system which was handed down from Descartes to the pre‐Kantian eclectics, nay, which even now is still the prevailing view of the great majority of cultured people in Europe, would apply this touchstone here.

Throughout and everywhere the true symbol of nature is the circle, because it is the schema or type of recurrence. This is, in fact, the most universal form in nature, which it carries out in everything, from the course of the stars down to the death and the genesis of organised beings, and by which alone, in the ceaseless stream of time, and its content, a permanent existence, _i.e._, a nature, becomes possible.

If in autumn we consider the little world of insects, and see how one prepares its bed to sleep the long, rigid winter‐sleep; another spins its cocoon to pass the winter as a chrysalis, and awake in spring rejuvenated and perfected; and, finally, how most of them, intending themselves to rest in the arms of death, merely arrange with care the suitable place for their egg, in order to issue forth again from it some day renewed;—this is nature’s great doctrine of immortality, which seeks to teach us that there is no radical difference between sleep and death, but the one endangers existence just as little as the other. The care with which the insect prepares a cell, or hole, or nest, deposits its egg in it, together with food for the larva that will come out of it in the following spring, and then quietly dies, is just like the care with which in the evening a man lays ready his clothes and his breakfast for the next morning, and then quietly goes to sleep; and at bottom it could not take place at all if it were not that the insect which dies in autumn is in itself, and according to its true nature, just as much identical with the one which is hatched out in the spring as the man who lies down to sleep is identical with the man who rises from it.

If now, after these considerations, we return to ourselves and our own species, then cast our glance forward far into the future, and seek to present to our minds the future generations, with the millions of their individuals in the strange form of their customs and pursuits, and then interpose with the question: Whence will all these come? Where are they now? Where is the fertile womb of that nothing, pregnant with worlds, which still conceals the coming races? Would not the smiling and true answer to this be, Where else should they be than there where alone the real always was and will be, in the present and its content?—thus with thee, the foolish questioner, who in this mistaking of his own nature is like the leaf upon the tree, which, fading in autumn and about to fall, complains at its destruction, and will not be consoled by looking forward to the fresh green which will clothe the tree in spring, but says lamenting, “I am not these! These are quite different leaves!” Oh, foolish leaf! Whither wilt thou? And whence should others come? Where is the nothing whose abyss thou fearest? Know thine own nature, that which is so filled with thirst for existence; recognise it in the inner, mysterious, germinating force of the tree, which, constantly _one_ and the same in all generations of leaves, remains untouched by all arising and passing away. And now, οἱη περ φυλλων γενεη, τοιηδε και ανδρων (_Qualis foliorum generatio, talis et hominum_). Whether the fly which now buzzes round me goes to sleep in the evening, and buzzes again tomorrow, or dies in the evening, and in spring another fly buzzes which has sprung from its egg: that is in itself the same thing; but therefore the knowledge which exhibits this as two fundamentally different things is not unconditioned, but relative, a knowledge of the phenomenon, not of the thing in itself. In the morning the fly exists again; it also exists again in the spring. What distinguishes for it the winter from the night? In Burdach’s “Physiology,” vol. i. § 275, we read, “Till ten o’clock in the morning no _Cercaria ephemera_ (one of the infusoria) is to be seen (in the infusion), and at twelve the whole water swarms with them. In the evening they die, and the next morning they again appear anew.” So it was observed by Nitzsch six days running.

So everything lingers but a moment, and hastens on to death. The plant and the insect die at the end of the summer, the brute and the man after a few years: death reaps unweariedly. Yet notwithstanding this, nay, as if this were not so at all, everything is always there and in its place, just as if everything were imperishable. The plant always thrives and blooms, the insect hums, the brute and the man exist in unwasted youth, and the cherries that have already been enjoyed a thousand times we have again before us every summer. The nations also exist as immortal individuals, although sometimes their names change; even their action, what they do and suffer, is always the same; although history always pretends to relate something different: for it is like the kaleidoscope, which at every turn shows a new figure, while we really always have the same thing before our eyes. What then presses itself more irresistibly upon us than the thought that that arising and passing away does not concern the real nature of things, but this remains untouched by it, thus is imperishable, and therefore all and each that _wills_ to exist actually exists continuously and without end. Accordingly at every given point of time all species of animals, from the gnat to the elephant, exist together complete. They have already renewed themselves many thousand times, and withal have remained the same. They know nothing of others like them, who have lived before them, or will live after them; it is the species which always lives, and in the consciousness of the imperishable nature of the species and their identity with it the individuals cheerfully exist. The will to live manifests itself in an endless present, because this is the form of the life of the species, which, therefore, never grows old, but remains always young. Death is for it what sleep is for the individual, or what winking is for the eye, by the absence of which the Indian gods are known, if they appear in human form. As through the entrance of night the world vanishes, but yet does not for a moment cease to exist, so man and brute apparently pass away through death, and yet their true nature continues, just as undisturbed by it. Let us now think of that alternation of death and birth as infinitely rapid vibrations, and we have before us the enduring objectification of the will, the permanent Ideas of being, fixed like the rainbow on the waterfall. This is temporal immortality. In consequence of this, notwithstanding thousands of years of death and decay, nothing has been lost, not an atom of the matter, still less anything of the inner being, that exhibits itself as nature. Therefore every moment we can cheerfully cry, “In spite of time, death, and decay, we are still all together!”

Perhaps we would have to except whoever had once said from the bottom of his heart, with regard to this game, “I want no more.” But this is not yet the place to speak of this.

But we have certainly to draw attention to the fact that the pain of birth and the bitterness of death are the two constant conditions under which the will to live maintains itself in its objectification, _i.e._, our inner nature, untouched by the course of time and the death of races, exists in an everlasting present, and enjoys the fruit of the assertion of the will to live. This is analogous to the fact that we can only be awake during the day on condition that we sleep during the night; indeed the latter is the commentary which nature offers us for the understanding of that difficult passage.(29)

For the substratum, or the content, πληρωμα, or the material of the _present_, is through all time really the same. The impossibility of knowing this identity directly is just _time_, a form and limitation of our intellect. That on account of it, for example, the future event is not yet, depends upon an illusion of which we become conscious when that event has come. That the essential form of our intellect introduces such an illusion explains and justifies itself from the fact that the intellect has come forth from the hands of nature by no means for the apprehension of the nature of things, but merely for the apprehension of motives, thus for the service of an individual and temporal phenomenon of will.(30)

Whoever comprehends the reflections which here occupy us will also understand the true meaning of the paradoxical doctrine of the Eleatics, that there is no arising and passing away, but the whole remains immovable: “Παρμενιδης και Μελισσος ανῃρουν γενεσιν και φθοραν, δια το νομιξειν το παν ακινητον” (_Parmenides et Melissus ortum et interitum tollebant, quoniam nihil moveri putabant_), _Stob. Ecl._, i. 21. Light is also thrown here upon the beautiful passage of Empedocles which Plutarch has preserved for us in the book, “_Adversus Coloten_,” c. 12:—

“Νηπιοι; ου γαρ σφιν δολιχοφρονες εισι μεριμναι, Οἱ δη γινεσθαι παρος ουκ εον ελπιζουσι, Η τι καταθνησκειν και εξολλυσθαι ἁπαντη. Ουκ αν ανηρ τοιαυτα σοφος φρεσι μαντευσαιτο, Ὡς οφρα μεν τε βιωσι (το δη βιοτον καλεουσι), Τοφρα μεν ουν εισιν, και σφιν παρα δεινα και ἐσθλα Πριν τε παγεν τε βροτοι, και επει λυθεν, ουδεν αρ᾽ ἐισιν.”

_(Stulta, et prolixas non admittentia curas_ _Pectora: qui sperant, existere posse, quod ante_ _Non fuit, aut ullam rem pessum protinus ire_;— _Non animo prudens homo quod præsentiat ullus_, _Dum vivunt (namque hoc vitaï nomine signant)_, _Sunt, et fortuna tum conflictantur utraque_: _Ante ortum nihil est homo, nec post funera quidquam.)_

The very remarkable and, in its place, astonishing passage in Diderot’s “_Jacques le fataliste_,” deserves not less to be mentioned here: “_Un château immense, au frontispice duquel on lisait: __‹ __Je n’appartiens à personne, et j’appartiens à tout le monde: vous y étiez avant que d’y entrer, vous y serez encore, quand vous en sortirez__ ›_.”

Certainly in the sense in which, when he is begotten, the man arises out of nothing, he becomes nothing through death. But really to learn to know this “nothing” would be very interesting; for it only requires moderate acuteness to see that this empirical nothing is by no means absolute, _i.e._, such as would in every sense be nothing. We are already led to this insight by the observation that all qualities of the parents recur in the children, thus have overcome death. Of this, however, I will speak in a special chapter.

There is no greater contrast than that between the ceaseless flight of time, which carries its whole content with it, and the rigid immobility of what is actually present, which at all times is one and the same. And if from this point of view we watch in a purely objective manner the immediate events of life, the _Nunc stans_ becomes clear and visible to us in the centre of the wheel of time. To the eye of a being of incomparably longer life, which at _one_ glance comprehended the human race in its whole duration, the constant alternation of birth and death would present itself as a continuous vibration, and accordingly it would not occur to it at all to see in this an ever new arising out of nothing and passing into nothing; but just as to our sight the quickly revolving spark appears as a continuous circle, the rapidly vibrating spring as a permanent triangle, the vibrating cord as a spindle, so to this eye the species would appear as that which has being and permanence, death and life as vibrations.

We will have false conceptions of the indestructibility of our true nature by death, so long as we do not make up our minds to study it primarily in the brutes, but claim for ourselves alone a class apart from them, under the boastful name of immortality. But it is this pretension alone, and the narrowness of view from which it proceeds, on account of which most men struggle so obstinately against the recognition of the obvious truth that we are essentially, and in the chief respect, the same as the brutes; nay, that they recoil at every hint of our relationship with these. But it is this denial of the truth which more than anything else closes against them the path to real knowledge of the indestructibility of our nature. For if we seek anything upon a wrong path, we have just on that account forsaken the right path, and upon the path we follow we will never attain to anything in the end but late disillusion. Up, then, follow the truth, not according to preconceived notions, but as nature leads! First of all, learn to recognise in the aspect of every young animal the existence of the species that never grows old, which, as a reflection of its eternal youth, imparts to every individual a temporary youth, and lets it come forth as new and fresh as if the world were of to‐day. Let one ask himself honestly whether the swallow of this year’s spring is absolutely a different one from the swallow of the first spring, and whether really between the two the miracle of the creation out of nothing has repeated itself millions of times, in order to work just as often into the hands of absolute annihilation. I know well that if I seriously assured any one that the cat which now plays in the yard is still the same one which made the same springs and played the same tricks there three hundred years ago, he would think I was mad; but I also know that it is much madder to believe that the cat of to‐day is through and through and in its whole nature quite a different one from the cat of three hundred years ago. One only requires truly and seriously to sink oneself in the contemplation of one of these higher vertebrates in order to become distinctly conscious that this unfathomable nature, taken as a whole, as it exists there, cannot possibly become nothing; and yet, on the other hand, one knows its transitoriness. This depends upon the fact that in this animal the infinite nature of its Idea (species) is imprinted in the finiteness of the individual. For in a certain sense it is of course true that in the individual we always have before us another being—in the sense which depends upon the principle of sufficient reason, in which are also included time and space, which constitute the _principium individuationis_. But in another sense it is not true—in the sense in which reality belongs to the permanent forms of things, the Ideas alone, and which was so clearly evident to Plato that it became his fundamental thought, the centre of his philosophy; and he made the comprehension of it the criterion of capacity for philosophising in general.

As the scattered drops of the roaring waterfall change with lightning rapidity, while the rainbow, whose supporter they are, remains immovably at rest, quite untouched by that ceaseless change, so every Idea, _i.e._, every species of living creature remains quite untouched by the continual change of its individuals. But it is the Idea, or the species in which the will to live is really rooted, and manifests itself; and therefore also the will is only truly concerned in the continuance of the species. For example, the lions which are born and die are like the drops of the waterfall; but the _leonitas_, the Idea or form of the lion, is like the unshaken rainbow upon it. Therefore Plato attributed true being to the Ideas alone, _i.e._, to the species; to the individuals only a ceaseless arising and passing away. From the profound consciousness of his imperishable nature really springs also the confidence and peace of mind with which every brute, and even human individual, moves unconcernedly along amid a host of chances, which may annihilate it any moment, and, moreover, moves straight on to death: out of its eyes, however, there shines the peace of the species, which that death does not affect, and does not concern. Even to man this peace could not be imparted by uncertain and changing dogmas. But, as was said, the contemplation of every animal teaches that death is no obstacle to the kernel of life, to the will in its manifestation. What an unfathomable mystery lies, then, in every animal! Look at the nearest one; look at your dog, how cheerfully and peacefully he lives! Many thousands of dogs have had to die before it came to this one’s turn to live. But the death of these thousands has not affected the Idea of the dog; it has not been in the least disturbed by all that dying. Therefore the dog exists as fresh and endowed with primitive force as if this were its first day and none could ever be its last; and out of its eyes there shines the indestructible principle in it, the archæus. What, then, has died during those thousands of years? Not the dog—it stands unscathed before us; merely its shadow, its image in our form of knowledge, which is bound to time. Yet how can one even believe that that passes away which for ever and ever exists and fills all time? Certainly the matter can be explained empirically; in proportion as death destroyed the individuals, generation produced new ones. But this empirical explanation is only an apparent explanation: it puts one riddle in the place of the other. The metaphysical understanding of the matter, although not to be got so cheaply, is yet the only true and satisfying one.

Kant, in his subjective procedure, brought to light the truth that time cannot belong to the thing in itself, because it lies pre‐formed in our apprehension. Now death is the temporal end of the temporal phenomenon; but as soon as we abstract time, there is no longer any end, and this word has lost all significance. But I, here upon the objective path, am trying to show the positive side of the matter, that the thing in itself remains untouched by time, and by that which is only possible through time, arising and passing away, and that the phenomena in time could not have even that ceaselessly fleeting existence which stands next to nothingness, if there were not in them a kernel of the infinite. Eternity is certainly a conception which has no perception as its foundation; accordingly it has also a merely negative content; it signifies a timeless existence. Time is yet merely an image of eternity, ὁ χρονος εἰκων τον αἰωνος, as Plotinus has it; and in the same way our temporal existence is a mere image of our true nature. This must lie in eternity, just because time is only the form of our knowledge; but on account of this alone do we know our own existence, and that of all things as transitory, finite, and subject to annihilation.

In the second book I have shown that the adequate objectivity of the will as the thing in itself, at each of its grades, is the (Platonic) Idea; similarly in the third book that the Ideas of things have the pure subject of knowledge as their correlative; consequently the knowledge of them only appears exceptionally and temporarily under specially favourable conditions. For individual knowledge, on the other hand, thus in time, the _Idea_ presents itself under the form of the _species_, which is the Idea broken up through its entrance into time. Therefore the species is the most immediate objectification of the thing in itself, _i.e._, of the will to live. The inmost nature of every brute, and also of man, accordingly lies in the species; thus the will to live, which is so powerfully active, is rooted in this, not really in the individual. On the other hand, in the individual alone lies the immediate consciousness: accordingly it imagines itself different from the species, and therefore fears death. The will to live manifests itself in relation to the individual as hunger and the fear of death: in relation to the species as sexual instinct and passionate care for the offspring. In agreement with this we find nature, which is free from that delusion of the individual, as careful for the maintenance of the species as it is indifferent to the destruction of the individuals: the latter are always only means, the former is the end. Therefore a glaring contrast appears between its niggardliness in the endowment of the individuals and its prodigality when the species is concerned. In the latter case from _one_ individual are often annually obtained a hundred thousand germs, and more; for example, from trees, fishes, crabs, termites, and many others. In the former case, on the contrary, only barely enough in the way of powers and organs is given to each to enable it with ceaseless effort to maintain its life. And, therefore, if an animal is injured or weakened it must, as a rule, starve. And where an incidental saving was possible, through the circumstance that one part could upon necessity be dispensed with, it has been withheld, even out of order. Hence, for example, many caterpillars are without eyes; the poor creatures grope in the dark from leaf to leaf, which, since they lack feelers, they do by moving three‐fourths of their body back and forward in the air, till they find some object. Hence they often miss their food which is to be found close by. But this happens in consequence of the _lex parsimoniæ naturæ_, to the expression of which _natura nihil facit supervacaneum_ one may add _et nihil largitur_. The same tendency of nature shows itself also in the fact that the more fit the individual is, on account of his age, for the propagation of the species, the more powerfully does the _vis naturæ medicatrix_ manifest itself in him, and therefore his wounds heal easily, and he easily recovers from diseases. This diminishes along with the power of generation, and sinks low after it is extinct; for now in the eyes of nature the individual has become worthless.

If now we cast another glance at the scale of existences, with the whole of their accompanying gradations of consciousness, from the polyp up to man, we see this wonderful pyramid, kept in ceaseless oscillation certainly by the constant death of the individuals, yet by means of the bond of generation, enduring in the species through the infinite course of time. While, then, as was explained above, the _objective_, the species, presents itself as indestructible, the _subjective_, which consists merely in the self‐consciousness of these beings, seems to be of the shortest duration, and to be unceasingly destroyed, in order, just as often, to come forth again from nothing in an incomprehensible manner. But, indeed, one must be very short‐sighted to let oneself be deceived by this appearance, and not to comprehend that, although the form of temporal permanence only belongs to the objective, the subjective, _i.e._, the will, which lives and manifests itself in all, and with it the subject of the _knowledge_ in which all exhibits itself, must be not less indestructible; because the permanence of the objective, or external, can yet only be the phenomenal appearance of the indestructibility of the subjective or internal; for the former can possess nothing which it has not received on loan from the latter; and cannot be essentially and originally an objective, a phenomenon, and then secondarily and accidentally a subjective, a thing in itself, a self‐consciousness. For clearly the former as a manifestation presupposes something which manifests itself, as being for other presupposes a being for self, and as object presupposes a subject; and not conversely: because everywhere the root of things must lie in that which they are for themselves, thus in the subjective, not in the objective, _i.e._, in that which they are only for others, in a foreign consciousness. Accordingly we found in the first book that the right starting‐point for philosophy is essentially and necessarily the subjective, _i.e._, the idealistic starting‐point; and also that the opposite starting‐point, that which proceeds from the objective, leads to materialism. At bottom, however, we are far more one with the world than we commonly suppose: its inner nature is our will, its phenomenal appearance is our idea. For any one who could bring this unity of being to distinct consciousness, the difference between the continuance of the external world after his death and his own continuance after death would vanish. The two would present themselves to him as one and the same; nay, he would laugh at the delusion that could separate them. For the understanding of the indestructibility of our nature coincides with that of the identity of the macrocosm and the microcosm. Meanwhile one may obtain light upon what is said here by a peculiar experiment, performed by means of the imagination, an experiment which might be called metaphysical. Let any one try to present vividly to his mind the time, in any case not far distant, when he will be dead. Then he thinks himself away and lets the world go on existing; but soon, to his own astonishment, he will discover that he was nevertheless still there. For he intended to present the world to his mind without himself; but the ego is the immediate element in consciousness, through which alone the world is brought about, and for which alone it exists. This centre of all existence, this kernel of all reality, is to be abolished, and yet the world is to go on existing; it is a thought which can be conceived in the abstract, but not realised. The endeavour to accomplish this, the attempt to think the secondary without the primary, the conditioned without the condition, that which is supported without the supporter, always fails, much in the same way as the attempt to think an equilateral, right‐angled triangle, or a destruction or origination of matter, and similar impossibilities. Instead of what was intended, the feeling here presses upon us that the world is not less in us than we in it, and that the source of all reality lies within us. The result is really this: the time when I shall not be will objectively come; but subjectively it can never come. It might therefore, indeed, be asked, how far every one, in his heart, actually believes in a thing which he really cannot conceive at all; or whether, since the profound consciousness of the indestructibleness of our true nature associates itself with that merely intellectual experiment, which, however, has already been made more or less distinctly by every one, whether, I say, our own death is not perhaps for us at bottom the most incredible thing in the world.

The deep conviction of the indestructibleness of our nature through death, which, as is also shown by the inevitable qualms of conscience at its approach, every one carries at the bottom of his heart, depends altogether upon the consciousness of the original and eternal nature of our being: therefore Spinoza expresses it thus: “_Sentimus, experimurque, nos æternos esse_.” For a reasonable man can only think of himself as imperishable, because he thinks of himself as without beginning, as eternal, in fact as timeless. Whoever, on the other hand, regards himself as having become out of nothing must also think that he will again become nothing; for that an eternity had passed before he was, and then a second eternity had begun, through which he will never cease to be, is a monstrous thought. Really the most solid ground for our immortality is the old principle: “_Ex nihilo nihil fit, et in nihilum nihil potest reverti_.” Theophrastus Paracelsus very happily says (Works, Strasburg, 1603, vol. ii. p. 6): “The soul in me has arisen out of something; therefore it does not come to nothing; for it comes out of something.” He gives the true reason. But whoever regards the birth of the man as his absolute beginning must regard death as his absolute end. For both are what they are in the same sense; consequently every one can only think of himself as _immortal_ so far as he also thinks of himself as _unborn_, and in the same sense. What birth is, that also is death, according to its nature and significance: it is the same line drawn in two directions. If the former is an actual arising out of nothing, then the latter is also an actual annihilation. But in truth it is only by means of the _eternity_ of our real being that we can conceive it as imperishable, and consequently this imperishableness is not temporal. The assumption that man is made out of nothing leads necessarily to the assumption that death is his absolute end. Thus in this the Old Testament is perfectly consistent; for no doctrine of immortality is suitable to a creation out of nothing. New Testament Christianity has such a doctrine because it is Indian in spirit, and therefore more than probably also of Indian origin, although only indirectly, through Egypt. But to the Jewish stem, upon which that Indian wisdom had to be grafted in the Holy Land, such a doctrine is as little suited as the freedom of the will to its determinism, or as

“_Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam Jungere si velit._”

It is always bad if one cannot be thoroughly original, and dare not carve out of the whole wood. Brahmanism and Buddhism, on the other hand, have quite consistently, besides the continued existence after death, an existence before birth to expiate the guilt of which we have this life. Moreover, how distinctly conscious they were of the necessary consistency in this is shown by the following passage from Colebrooke’s “History of the Indian Philosophy” in the “Transac. of the Asiatic London Society,” vol. i. p. 577: “Against the system of the Bhagavatas which is but

## partially heretical, the objection upon which the chief stress is laid by

Vyaso is, that the soul would not be eternal if it were a production, and consequently had a beginning.” Further, in Upham’s “Doctrine of Buddhism,” p. 110, it is said: “The lot in hell of impious persons called Deitty is the most severe: these are they who, discrediting the evidence of Buddha, adhere to the heretical doctrine that all living beings had their beginning in the mother’s womb, and will have their end in death.”

Whoever conceives his existence as merely accidental must certainly fear that he will lose it by death. On the other hand, whoever sees, even only in general, that his existence rests upon some kind of original necessity will not believe that this which has produced so wonderful a thing is limited to such a brief span of time, but that it is active in every one. But he will recognise his existence as necessary who reflects that up till now, when he exists, already an infinite time, thus also an infinity of changes, has run its course, but in spite of this he yet exists; thus the Whole range of all possible states has already exhausted itself without being able to destroy his existence. _If he could ever not be, he would already not be now._ For the infinity of the time that has already elapsed, with the exhausted possibility of the events in it, guarantees that _what exists, exists necessarily_. Therefore every one must conceive himself as a necessary being, _i.e._, as a being whose existence would follow from its true and exhaustive definition if one only had it. In this line of thought, then, really lies the only immanent proof of the imperishableness of our nature, _i.e._, the only proof of this that holds good within the sphere of empirical data. In this nature existence must inhere, because it shows itself as independent of all states which can possibly be introduced through the chain of causes; for these states have already done what they could, and yet our existence has remained unshaken by it, as the ray of light by the storm wind which it cuts through. If time, of its own resources, could bring us to a happy state, then we would already have been there long ago; for an infinite time lies behind us. But also: if it could lead us to destruction, we would already have long been no more. From the fact that we now exist, it follows, if well considered, that we must at all times exist. For we are ourselves the nature which time has taken up into itself in order to fill its void; consequently it fills the whole of time, present, past, and future, in the same way, and it is just as impossible for us to fall out of existence as to fall out of space. Carefully considered, it is inconceivable that what once exists in all the strength of reality should ever become nothing, and then not be, through an infinite time. Hence has arisen the Christian doctrine of the restoration of all things, that of the Hindus of the constantly repeated creation of the world by Brahma, together with similar dogmas of the Greek philosophers. The great mystery of our being and not being, to explain which these and all kindred dogmas have been devised, ultimately rests upon the fact that the same thing which objectively constitutes an infinite course of time is subjectively an indivisible, ever present present: but who comprehends it? It has been most distinctly set forth by Kant in his immortal doctrine of the ideality of time and the sole reality of the thing in itself. For it results from this that the really essential part of things, of man, of the world, lies permanently and enduringly in the _Nunc stans_, firm and immovable; and that the change of the phenomena and events is a mere consequence of our apprehension of them by means of our form of perception, which is time. Accordingly, instead of saying to men, “Ye have arisen through birth, but are immortal,” one ought to say to them, “Ye are not nothing,” and teach them to understand this in the sense of the saying attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, “Το γαρ ὀν ἀει ἐσται” (_Quod enim est, erit semper_), _Stob. Ecl._, i. 43, 6. If, however, this does not succeed, but the anxious heart raises its old lament, “I see all beings arise through birth out of nothing, and after a brief term again return to this; my existence also, now in the present, will soon lie in the distant past, and I will be nothing!”—the right answer is, “Dost thou not exist? Hast thou not within thee the valuable present, after which ye children of time so eagerly strive, now within, actually within? And dost thou understand how thou hast attained to it? Knowest thou the paths which have led thee to it, that thou canst know they will be shut against thee by death? An existence of thyself after the destruction of thy body is not conceivable by thee as possible; but can it be more inconceivable to thee than thy present existence, and how thou hast attained to it? Why shouldst thou doubt but that the secret paths to this present, which stood open to thee, will also stand open to every future present?”

If, then, considerations of this kind are at any rate adapted to awaken the conviction that there is something in us which death cannot destroy, this yet only takes place by raising us to a point of view from which birth is not the beginning of our existence. But from this it follows that what is proved to be indestructible by death is not properly the individual, which, moreover, as having arisen through generation, and having in itself the qualities of the father and mother, presents itself as a mere difference of the species, but as such can only be finite. As, in accordance with this, the individual has no recollection of its existence before its birth, so it can have no remembrance of its present existence after death. But every one places his ego in _consciousness_; this seems to him therefore to be bound to individuality, with which, besides, everything disappears which is peculiar to him, as to this, and distinguishes him from others. His continued existence without individuality becomes to him therefore indistinguishable from the continuance of other beings, and he sees his ego sink. But whoever thus links his existence to the identity of consciousness, and therefore desires an endless existence after death for this, ought to reflect that he can certainly only attain this at the price of just as endless a past before birth. For since he has no remembrance of an existence before birth, thus his consciousness begins with birth, he must accept his birth as an origination of his existence out of nothing. But then he purchases the endless time of his existence after death for just as long a time before birth; thus the account balances without any profit for him. If, on the other hand, the existence which death leaves untouched is different from that of the individual consciousness, then it must be independent of birth, just as of death; and therefore, with regard to it, it must be equally true to say, “I will always be,” and “I have always been;” which then gives two infinities for one. But the great equivocation really lies in the word “I,” as any one will see at once who remembers the contents of our second book, and the separation which is made there of the willing from the knowing part of our nature. According as I understand this word I can say, “Death is my complete end;” or, “This my personal phenomenal existence is just as infinitely small a part of my true nature as I am of the world.” But the “I” is the dark point in consciousness, as on the retina the exact point at which the nerve of sight enters is blind, as the brain itself is entirely without sensation, the body of the sun is dark, and the eye sees all except itself. Our faculty of knowledge is directed entirely towards without, in accordance with the fact that it is the product of a brain function, which has arisen for the purpose of mere self‐maintenance, thus of the search for nourishment and the capture of prey. Therefore every one knows himself only as this individual as it presents itself in external perception. If, on the other hand, he could bring to consciousness what he is besides and beyond this, then he would willingly give up his individuality, smile at the tenacity of his attachment to it, and say, “What is the loss of this individuality to me, who bear in myself the possibility of innumerable individualities?” He would see that even if a continued existence of his individuality does not lie before him, it is yet quite as good as if he had such an existence, because he carries in himself complete compensation for it. Besides, however, it may further be taken into consideration that the individuality of most men is so miserable and worthless that with it they truly lose nothing, and that that in them which may still have some worth is the universal human element; but to this imperishableness can be promised. Indeed, even the rigid unalterableness and essential limitation of every individual would, in the case of an endless duration of it, necessarily at last produce such great weariness by its monotony that only to be relieved of this one would prefer to become nothing. To desire that the individuality should be immortal really means to wish to perpetuate an error infinitely. For at bottom every individuality is really only a special error, a false step, something that had better not be; nay, something which it is the real end of life to bring us back from. This also finds confirmation in the fact that the great majority, indeed really all men, are so constituted that they could not be happy in whatever kind of world they might be placed. In proportion as such a world excluded want and hardship, they would become a prey to ennui, and in proportion as this was prevented, they would fall into want, misery, and suffering. Thus for a blessed condition of man it would be by no means sufficient that he should be transferred to a “better world,” but it would also be necessary that a complete change should take place in himself; that thus he should no longer be what he is, and, on the contrary, should become what he is not. But for this he must first of all cease to be what he is: this desideratum is, as a preliminary, supplied by death, the moral necessity of which can already be seen from this point of view. To be transferred to another world and to have his whole nature changed are, at bottom, one and the same. Upon this also ultimately rests that dependence of the objective upon the subjective which the idealism of our first book shows. Accordingly here lies the point at which the transcendent philosophy links itself on to ethics. If one considers this one will find that the awaking from the dream of life is only possible through the disappearance along with it of its whole ground‐warp also, But this is its organ itself, the intellect together with its forms, with which the dream would spin itself out without end, so firmly is it incorporated with it. That which really dreamt this dream is yet different from it, and alone remains over. On the other hand, the fear that with death all will be over may be compared to the case of one who imagines in a dream that there are only dreams without a dreamer. But now, after an individual consciousness has once been ended by death, would it even be desirable that it should be kindled again in order to continue for ever? The greater part of its content, nay, generally its whole content, is nothing but a stream of small, earthly, paltry thoughts and endless cares. Let them, then, at last be stilled! Therefore with a true instinct, the ancients inscribed upon their gravestones: _Securitati perpetuæ_;—or _Bonæ quieti_. But if here, as so often has happened, a continued existence of the individual consciousness should be desired, in order to connect with it a future reward or punishment, what would really be aimed at in this would simply be the compatibility of virtue and egoism. But these two will never embrace: they are fundamentally opposed. On the other hand, the conviction is well founded, which the sight of noble conduct calls forth, that the spirit of love, which enjoins one man to spare his enemy, and another to protect at the risk of his life some one whom he has never seen before, can never pass away and become nothing.

The most thorough answer to the question as to the continued existence of the individual after death lies in Kant’s great doctrine of the _ideality of time_, which just here shows itself specially fruitful and rich in consequences, for it substitutes a purely theoretical but well‐proved insight for dogmas which upon one path as upon the other lead to the absurd, and thus settles at once the most exciting of all metaphysical questions. Beginning, ending, and continuing are conceptions which derive their significance simply and solely from time, and are therefore valid only under the presupposition of this. But time has no absolute existence; it is not the manner of being of the thing in itself, but merely the form of our _knowledge_ of our existence and nature, and that of all things, which is just on this account very imperfect, and is limited to mere phenomena. Thus with reference to this knowledge alone do the conceptions of ceasing and continuing find application, not with reference to that which exhibits itself in these, the inner being of things in relation to which these conceptions have therefore no longer any meaning. For this shows itself also in the fact that an answer to the question which arises from those time‐conceptions is impossible, and every assertion of such an answer, whether upon one side or the other, is open to convincing objections. One might indeed assert that our true being continues after death because it is false that it is destroyed; but one might just as well assert that it is destroyed because it is false that it continues: at bottom the one is as true as the other. Accordingly something like an antinomy might certainly be set up here. But it would rest upon mere negations. In it one would deny two contradictorily opposite predicates of the subject of the judgment, but only because the whole category of these predicates would be inapplicable to that subject. But if now one denies these two predicates, not together, but separately, it appears as if the contradictory opposite of the predicate which in each case is denied were proved of the subject of the judgment. This, however, depends upon the fact that here incommensurable quantities are compared, for the problem removes us to a scene where time is abolished, and yet asks about temporal properties which it is consequently equally false to attribute to, or to deny of the subject. This just means: the problem is transcendent. In this sense death remains a mystery.

On the other hand, adhering to that distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself, we can make the assertion that, as phenomenon, man is certainly perishable, but yet his true being will not be involved in this. Thus this true being is indestructible, although, on account of the elimination of time‐conceptions which is connected with it, we cannot attribute to it continuance. Accordingly we would be led here to the conception of an indestructibility which would yet be no continuance. Now this is a conception which, having been obtained on the path of abstraction, can certainly also be thought in the abstract, but yet cannot be supported by any perception, and consequently cannot really become distinct; yet, on the other hand, we must here keep in mind that we have not, like Kant, absolutely given up the knowledge of the thing in itself, but know that it is to be sought for in the will. It is true that we have never asserted an absolute and exhaustive knowledge of the thing in itself, but rather have seen very well that it is impossible to know anything as it is absolutely and in itself. For as soon as I _know_, I have an idea; but this idea, just because it is _my_ idea, cannot be identical with what is known, but repeats it in an entirely different form, for it makes a being for other out of a being for self, and is thus always to be regarded as a phenomenal appearance of the thing in itself. Therefore for a _knowing_ consciousness, however it may be constituted, there can be always only phenomena. This is not entirely obviated even by the fact that it is my own nature which is known; for, since it falls within my _knowing_ consciousness, it is already a reflex of my nature, something different from this itself, thus already in a certain degree phenomenon. So far, then, as I am a knowing being, I have even in my own nature really only a phenomenon; so far, on the other hand, as I am directly this nature itself, I am not a _knowing_ being. For it is sufficiently proved in the second book that knowledge is only a secondary property of our being, and introduced by its animal nature. Strictly speaking, then, we know even our own will always merely as phenomenon, and not as it may be absolutely in and for itself. But in that second book, and also in my work upon the will in nature, it is fully explained and proved that if, in order to penetrate into the inner nature of things, leaving what is given merely indirectly and from without, we stick to the only phenomenon into the nature of which an immediate insight from within is attainable, we find in this quite definitely, as the ultimate kernel of reality, the will, in which therefore we recognise the thing in itself in so far as it has here no longer space, although it still has time, for its form consequently really only in its most immediate manifestation, and with the reservation that this knowledge of it is still not exhaustive and entirely adequate. Thus in this sense we retain here also the conception of will as that of the thing in itself.

The conception of ceasing to be is certainly applicable to man as a phenomenon in time, and empirical knowledge plainly presents death as the end of this temporal existence. The end of the person is just as real as was its beginning, and in the same sense as before birth we were not, after death we shall be no more. Yet no more can be destroyed by death than was produced by birth; thus not that through which birth first became possible. In this sense _natus et denatus_ is a beautiful expression. But now the whole of empirical knowledge affords us merely phenomena; therefore only phenomena are involved in the temporal processes of coming into being and passing away, and not that which manifests itself in the phenomena, the thing in itself. For this the opposition of coming into being and passing away conditioned by the brain, does not exist at all, but has here lost meaning and significance. It thus remains untouched by the temporal end of a temporal phenomenon, and constantly retains that existence to which the conceptions of beginning, end, and continuance are not applicable. But the thing in itself, so far as we can follow it, is in every phenomenal being the will of this being: so also in man. Consciousness, on the other hand, consists in knowledge. But knowledge, as

## activity of the brain, and consequently as function of the organism,

belongs, as has been sufficiently proved, to the mere phenomenon, and therefore ends with this. The will alone, whose work, or rather whose image was the body, is that which is indestructible. The sharp distinction of will from knowledge, together with the primacy of the former, which constitutes the fundamental characteristic of my philosophy, is therefore the only key to the contradiction which presents itself in so many ways, and arises ever anew in every consciousness, even the most crude, that death is our end, and that yet we must be eternal and indestructible, thus the _sentimus, experimurque nos æternos esse_ of Spinoza. All philosophers have erred in this: they place the metaphysical, the indestructible, the eternal element in man in the _intellect_. It lies exclusively in the _will_, which is entirely different from the intellect, and alone is original. The intellect, as was most fully shown in the second book, is a secondary phenomenon, and conditioned by the brain, therefore beginning and ending with this. The will alone is that which conditions, the kernel of the whole phenomenon, consequently free from the forms of the phenomenon to which time belongs, thus also indestructible. Accordingly with death consciousness is certainly lost, but not that which produced and sustained consciousness; life is extinguished, but not the principle of life also, which manifested itself in it. Therefore a sure feeling informs every one that there is something in him which is absolutely imperishable and indestructible. Indeed the freshness and vividness of memories of the most distant time, of earliest childhood, bears witness to the fact that something in us does not pass away with time, does not grow old, but endures unchanged. But what this imperishable element is one could not make clear to oneself. It is not consciousness any more than it is the body upon which clearly consciousness depends. But it is just that which, when it appears in consciousness, presents itself as _will_. Beyond this immediate manifestation of it we certainly cannot go; because we cannot go beyond consciousness; therefore the question what that may be when it does not come within consciousness, _i.e._, what it is absolutely in itself, remains unanswerable.

In the phenomenon, and by means of its forms, time and space, as _principium individuationis_, what presents itself is that the human individual perishes, while the human race, on the contrary, always remains and lives. But in the true being of things, which is free from these forms, this whole distinction between the individual and the race also disappears, and the two are immediately one. The whole will to live is in the individual, as it is in the race, and therefore the continuance of the species is merely the image of the indestructibility of the individual.

Since, then, the infinitely important understanding of the indestructibility of our true nature by death depends entirely upon the distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself, I wish now to bring this difference into the clearest light by explaining it in the opposite of death, thus in the origin of the animal existence, _i.e._, generation. For this process, which is just as mysterious as death, presents to us most directly the fundamental opposition between the phenomenal appearance and the true being of things, _i.e._, between the world as idea and the world as will, and also the entire heterogeneity of the laws of these two. The act of procreation presents itself to us in a twofold manner: first, for self‐consciousness, whose only object, as I have often shown, is the will, with all its affections; and then for the consciousness of other things, _i.e._, the world of idea, or the empirical reality of things. Now, from the side of the will, thus inwardly, subjectively, for self‐ consciousness, that act presents itself as the most immediate and complete satisfaction of the will, _i.e._, as sensual pleasure. From the side of the idea, on the other hand, thus externally, objectively, for the consciousness of other things, this act is just the woof of the most cunning of webs, the foundation of the inexpressibly complicated animal organism, which then only requires to be developed to become visible to our astonished eyes. This organism, whose infinite complication and perfection is only known to him who has studied anatomy, cannot, from the side of the idea, be otherwise conceived and thought of than as a system devised with the most ingenious forethought and carried out with the most consummate skill and exactness, as the most arduous work of profound reflection. But from the side of the will we know, through self‐ consciousness, the production of this organism as the work of an act which is exactly the opposite of all reflection, an impetuous, blind impulse, an exceedingly pleasurable sensation. This opposition is closely related to the infinite contrast, which is shown above, between the absolute facility with which nature produces its works, together with the correspondingly boundless carelessness with which it abandons them to destruction, and the incalculably ingenious and studied construction of these very works, judging from which they must have been infinitely difficult to make, and their maintenance should have been provided for with all conceivable care; while we have the opposite before our eyes. If now by this certainly very unusual consideration, we have brought together in the boldest manner the two heterogeneous sides of the world, and, as it were, grasped them with one hand, we must now hold them fast in order to convince ourselves of the entire invalidity of the laws of the phenomenon, or the world as idea, for that of will, or the thing in itself. Then it will become more comprehensible to us that while on the side of the idea, that is, in the phenomenal world, there exhibits itself to us now an arising out of nothing, and now an entire annihilation of what has arisen, from that other side, or in itself, a nature lies before us with reference to which the conceptions of arising and passing away have no significance. For, by going back to the root, where, by means of self‐consciousness, the phenomenon and the thing in itself meet, we have just, as it were, palpably apprehended that the two are absolutely incommensurable, and the whole manner of being of the one, together with all the fundamental laws of its being, signify nothing, and less than nothing, in the other. I believe that this last consideration will only be rightly understood by a few, and that it will be displeasing and even offensive to all who do not understand it, but I shall never on this account omit anything that can serve to illustrate my fundamental thought.

At the beginning of this