Chapter XLI.(27) On Death And Its Relation To The Indestructibility Of Our

True Nature.

Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore

Socrates has defined the latter as θανατου μελετη. Indeed without death

men would scarcely philosophise. Therefore it will be quite in order that

a special consideration of this should have its place here at the

beginning of the last, most serious, and most important of our books.

The brute lives without a proper knowledge of death; therefore the

individual brute enjoys directly the absolute imperishableness of the

species, for it is only conscious of itself as endless. In the case of men

the terrifying certainty of death necessarily entered with reason. But as

everywhere in nature with every evil a means of cure, or at least some

compensation, is given, the same reflection which introduces the knowledge

of death also assists us to _metaphysical_ points of view, which comfort

us concerning it, and of which the brute has no need and is incapable. All

religious and philosophical systems are principally directed to this end,

and are thus primarily the antidote to the certainty of death, which the

reflective reason produces out of its own means. Yet the degree in which

they attain this end is very different, and certainly _one_ religion or

philosophy will, far more than the others, enable men to look death in the

face with a quiet glance. Brahmanism and Buddhism, which teach man to

regard himself as himself, the original being, the Brahm, to which all

coming into being and passing away is essentially foreign, will achieve

much more in this respect than such as teach that man is made out of

nothing, and actually begins at birth his existence derived from another.

Answering to this we find in India a confidence and a contempt for death

of which one has no conception in Europe. It is, in fact, a hazardous

thing to force upon a man, by early imprinting them, weak and untenable

conceptions in this important regard, and thereby making him for ever

incapable of taking up correct and stable ones. For example, to teach him

that he recently came out of nothing, and consequently through an eternity

has been nothing, but yet for the future will be imperishable, is just the

same as to teach him that although he is through and through the work of

another, yet he will be held responsible through all eternity for his

actions. If, then, when the mind ripens and reflection appears, the

untenable nature of such doctrines forces itself upon him, he has nothing

better to put in its place, nay, is no longer capable of understanding

anything better, and thus loses the comfort which nature had destined for

him also, as a compensation for the certainty of death. In consequence of

such a process, we see even now in England (1844), among ruined factory

hands, the Socialists, and in Germany, among ruined students, the young

Hegelians, sink to the absolutely physical point of view, which leads to

the result: _edite_, _bibite_, _post mortem nulla voluptas_, and so far

may be defined as bestialism.

However, after all that has been taught concerning death, it cannot be

denied that, at least in Europe, the opinion of men, nay, often even of

the same individual, very frequently vacillates between the conception of

death as absolute annihilation and the assumption that we are, as it were,

with skin and hair, immortal. Both are equally false: but we have not so

much to find a correct mean as rather to gain the higher point of view

from which such notions disappear of themselves.

In these considerations I shall first of all start from the purely

empirical standpoint. Here there primarily lies before us the undeniable

fact that, according to the natural consciousness, man not only fears

death for his own person more than anything else, but also weeps violently

over the death of those that belong to him, and indeed clearly not

egotistically, for his own loss, but out of sympathy for the great

misfortune that has befallen them. Therefore he also censures those who in

such a case neither weep nor show sadness as hard‐hearted and unloving. It

is parallel with this that revenge, in its highest degree, seeks the death

of the adversary as the greatest evil that can be inflicted. Opinions

change with time and place; but the voice of nature remains always and

everywhere the same, and is therefore to be heeded before everything else.

Now here it seems distinctly to say that death is a great evil. In the

language of nature death means annihilation. And that death is a serious

matter may be concluded from the fact that, as every one knows, life is no

joke. We must indeed deserve nothing better than these two.

In fact, the fear of death is independent of all knowledge; for the brute

has it, although it does not know death. Everything that is born brings it

with it into the world. But this fear of death is _a priori_ only the

reverse side of the will to live, which indeed we all are. Therefore in

every brute the fear of its destruction is inborn, like the care for its

maintenance. Thus it is the fear of death, and not the mere avoidance of

pain, which shows itself in the anxious carefulness with which the brute

seeks to protect itself, and still more its brood, from everything that

might become dangerous. Why does the brute flee, trembling, and seek to

conceal itself? Because it is simply the will to live, but, as such, is

forfeited to death, and wishes to gain time. Such also, by nature, is man.

The greatest evil, the worst that can anywhere threaten, is death; the

greatest fear is the fear of death. Nothing excites us so irresistibly to

the most lively interest as danger to the life of others; nothing is so

shocking as an execution. Now the boundless attachment to life which

appears here cannot have sprung from knowledge and reflection; to these it

rather appears foolish, for the objective worth of life is very uncertain,

and at least it remains doubtful whether it is preferable to not being,

nay, if experience and reflection come to be expressed, not being must

certainly win. If one knocked on the graves, and asked the dead whether

they wished to rise again, they would shake their heads. Such is the

opinion of Socrates in “Plato’s Apology,” and even the gay and amiable

Voltaire cannot help saying, “_On aime la vie; mais le néant ne laisse pas

d’avoir du bon_;” and again, “_Je ne sais pas ce que c’est que la vie

éternelle, mais celle‐ci est une mauvaise plaisanterie_.” Besides, life

must in any case soon end; so that the few years which perhaps one has yet

to be vanish entirely before the endless time when one will be no more.

Accordingly it appears to reflection even ludicrous to be so anxious about

this span of time, to tremble so much if our own life or that of another

is in danger, and to compose tragedies the horror of which has its

strength in the fear of death. That powerful attachment to life is

therefore irrational and blind; it can only be explained from the fact

that our whole inner nature is itself will to live, to which, therefore,

life must appear as the highest good, however embittered, short, and

uncertain it may always be; and that that will, in itself and originally,

is unconscious and blind. Knowledge, on the contrary, far from being the

source of that attachment to life, even works against it, for it discloses

the worthlessness of life, and thus combats the fear of death. When it

conquers, and accordingly the man faces death courageously and composedly,

this is honoured as great and noble, thus we hail then the triumph of

knowledge over the blind will to live, which is yet the kernel of our own

being. In the same way we despise him in whom knowledge is defeated in

that conflict, and who therefore clings unconditionally to life, struggles

to the utmost against approaching death, and receives it with despair;(28)

and yet in him it is only the most original being of ourselves and of

nature that expresses itself. We may here ask, in passing, how could this

boundless love of life and endeavour to maintain it in every way as long

as possible be regarded as base, contemptible, and by the adherents of

every religion as unworthy of this, if it were the gift of good gods, to

be recognised with thankfulness? And how could it then seem great and

noble to esteem it lightly? Meanwhile, what is confirmed by these

considerations is—(1.) that the will to live is the inmost nature of man;

(2.) that in itself it is unconscious and blind; (3.) that knowledge is an

adventitious principle, which is originally foreign to the will; (4.) that

knowledge conflicts with the will, and that our judgment applauds the

victory of knowledge over the will.

If what makes death seem so terrible to us were the thought of not being,

we would necessarily think with equal horror of the time when as yet we

were not. For it is irrefutably certain that not being after death cannot

be different from not being before birth, and consequently is also no more

deplorable. A whole eternity has run its course while as yet we were not,

but that by no means disturbs us. On the other hand, we find it hard, nay,

unendurable, that after the momentary intermezzo of an ephemeral

existence, a second eternity should follow in which we shall no longer be.

Should, then, this thirst for existence have arisen because we have now

tasted it and have found it so delightful? As was already briefly

explained above, certainly not; far sooner could the experience gained

have awakened an infinite longing for the lost paradise of non‐existence.

To the hope, also, of the immortality of the soul there is always added

that of a “better world”—a sign that the present world is not much good.

Notwithstanding all this, the question as to our state after death has

certainly been discussed, in books and verbally, ten thousand times

oftener than the question as to our state before birth. Yet theoretically

the one is just as near at hand and as fair a problem as the other; and

besides, whoever had answered the one would soon see to the bottom of the

other. We have fine declamations about how shocking it would be to think

that the mind of man, which embraces the world, and has so many very

excellent thoughts, should sink with him into the grave; but we hear

nothing about this mind having allowed a whole eternity to pass before it

came into being with these its qualities, and how the world must have had

to do without it all that time. Yet no question presents itself more

naturally to knowledge, uncorrupted by the will, than this: An infinite

time has passed before my birth; what was I during this time?

Metaphysically, it might perhaps be answered, “I was always I; that is,

all who during that time said I, were just I.” But let us look away from

this to our present entirely empirical point of view, and assume that I

did not exist at all. Then I can console myself as to the infinite time

after my death, when I shall not be, with the infinite time when I already

was not, as a well‐accustomed, and indeed very comfortable, state. For the

eternity _a parte post_ without me can be just as little fearful as the

eternity _a parte ante_ without me, since the two are distinguished by

nothing except by the interposition of an ephemeral dream of life. All

proofs, also, for continued existence after death may just as well be

applied _in partem ante_, where they then demonstrate existence before

life, in the assumption of which the Hindus and Buddhists therefore show

themselves very consistent. Kant’s ideality of time alone solves all these

riddles. But we are not speaking of that now. This, however, results from

what has been said, that to mourn for the time when one will be no more is

just as absurd as it would be to mourn over the time when as yet one was

not; for it is all the same whether the time which our existence does not

fill is related to that which it does fill, as future or as past.

But, also, regarded entirely apart from these temporal considerations, it

is in and for itself absurd to look upon not being as an evil; for every

evil, as every good, presupposes existence, nay, even consciousness: but

the latter ceases with life, as also in sleep and in a swoon; therefore

the absence of it is well known to us, and trusted, as containing no evil

at all: its entrance, however, is always an affair of a moment. From this

point of view Epicurus considered death, and therefore quite rightly said,

“ὁ θανατος μηδεν προς ἡμας” (Death does not concern us); with the

explanation that when we are death is not, and when death is we are not

(_Diog. Laert._, x. 27). To have lost what cannot be missed is clearly no

evil. Therefore ceasing to be ought to disturb us as little as not having

been. Accordingly from the standpoint of knowledge there appears

absolutely no reason to fear death. But consciousness consists in knowing;

therefore, for consciousness death is no evil. Moreover, it is really not

this _knowing_ part of our _ego_ that fears death, but the _fuga mortis_

proceeds entirely and alone from the blind _will_, of which everything

living is filled. To this, however, as was already mentioned above, it is

essential, just because it is will to live, whose whole nature consists in

the effort after life and existence, and which is not originally endowed

with knowledge, but only in consequence of its objectification in animal

individuals. If now the will, by means of knowledge, beholds death as the

end of the phenomenon with which it has identified itself, and to which,

therefore, it sees itself limited, its whole nature struggles against it

with all its might. Whether now it has really something to fear from death

we will investigate further on, and will then remember the real source of

the fear of death, which has been shown here along with the requisite

distinction of the willing and the knowing part of our nature.

Corresponding to this, then, what makes death so terrible to us is not so

much the end of life—for this can appear to no one specially worthy of

regret—but rather the destruction of the organism; really because this is

the will itself exhibiting itself as body. But we only really feel this

destruction in the evils of disease or of old age; death itself, on the

other hand, consists for the _subject_ only in the moment when

consciousness vanishes because the activity of the brain ceases. The

extension of the stoppage to all the other parts of the organism which

follows this is really already an event after death. Thus death, in a

subjective regard, concerns the consciousness alone. Now what the

vanishing of this may be every one can to a certain extent judge of from

going to sleep; but it is still better known to whoever has really

fainted, for in this the transition is not so gradual, nor accompanied by

dreams, but first the power of sight leaves us, still fully conscious, and

then immediately the most profound unconsciousness enters; the sensation

that accompanies it, so far as it goes, is anything but disagreeable; and

without doubt, as sleep is the brother of death, so the swoon is its twin‐

brother. Even violent death cannot be painful, for even severe wounds are

not felt at all till some time afterwards, often not till the outward

signs of them are observed. If they are rapidly mortal, consciousness will

vanish before this discovery; if they result in death later, then it is

the same as with other illnesses. All those also who have lost

consciousness in water, or from charcoal fumes, or through hanging are

well known to say that it happened without pain. And now, finally, the

death which is properly in accordance with nature, death from old age,

euthanasia, is a gradual vanishing and sinking out of existence in an

imperceptible manner. Little by little in old age, the passions and

desires, with the susceptibility for their objects, are extinguished; the

emotions no longer find anything to excite them; for the power of

presenting ideas to the mind always becomes weaker, its images fainter;

the impressions no longer cleave to us, but pass over without leaving a

trace, the days roll ever faster, events lose their significance,

everything grows pale. The old man stricken in years totters about or

rests in a corner now only a shadow, a ghost of his former self. What

remains there for death to destroy? One day a sleep is his last, and his

dreams are ——. They are the dreams which Hamlet inquires after in the

famous soliloquy. I believe we dream them even now.

I have here also to remark that the maintenance of the life process,

although it has a metaphysical basis, does not go on without resistance,

and consequently not without effort. It is this to which the organism

yields every night, on account of which it then suspends the brain

function and diminishes certain secretions, the respiration, the pulse,

and the development of heat. From this we may conclude that the entire

ceasing of the life process must be a wonderful relief to its motive

force; perhaps this has some share in the expression of sweet contentment

on the faces of most dead persons. In general the moment of death may be

like the moment of awaking from a heavy dream that has oppressed us like a

nightmare.

Up to this point the result we have arrived at is that death, however much

it may be feared, can yet really be no evil. But often it even appears as

a good thing, as something wished for, as a friend. All that have met with

insuperable obstacles to their existence or their efforts, that suffer

from incurable diseases or inconsolable griefs, have as a last refuge,

which generally opens to them of its own accord, the return into the womb

of nature, from which they arose for a short time, enticed by the hope of

more favourable conditions of existence than have fallen to their lot, and

the same path out of which constantly remains open. That return is the

_cessio bonorum_ of life. Yet even here it is only entered upon after a

physical and moral conflict: so hard does one struggle against returning

to the place from which one came out so lightly and readily, to an

existence which has so much suffering and so little pleasure to offer. The

Hindus give the god of death, Yama, two faces; one very fearful and

terrible, and one very cheerful and benevolent. This partly explains

itself from the reflections we have just made.

At the empirical point of view at which we still stand, the following

consideration is one which presents itself of its own accord, and

therefore deserves to be accurately defined by illustration, and thereby

referred to its proper limits. The sight of a dead body shows me that

sensibility, irritability, circulation of the blood, reproduction, &c.,

have here ceased. I conclude from this with certainty that what actuated

these hitherto, which was yet always something unknown to me, now actuates

them no longer, thus has departed from them. But if I should now wish to

add that this must have been just what I have known only as consciousness,

consequently as intelligence (soul), this would be not only an unjustified

but clearly a false conclusion. For consciousness has always showed itself

to me not as the cause, but as the product and result of the organised

life, for it rose and sank in consequence of this in the different periods

of life, in health and sickness, in sleep, in a swoon, in awaking, &c.,

thus always appeared as effect, never as cause of the organised life,

always showed itself as something which arises and passes away, and again

arises, so long as the conditions of this still exist, but not apart from

them. Nay, I may also have seen that the complete derangement of

consciousness, madness, far from dragging down with it and depressing the

other forces, or indeed endangering life, heightens these very much,

especially irritability or muscular force, and rather lengthens than

shortens life, if other causes do not come in. Then, also: I knew

individuality as a quality of everything organised, and therefore, if this

is a self‐conscious organism, also of consciousness. But there exists no

occasion now to conclude that individuality was inherent in that vanished

principle, which imparts life, and is completely unknown to me; all the

less so as I see that everywhere in nature each particular phenomenon is

the work of a general force which is active in thousands of similar

phenomena. But, on the other hand, there is just as little occasion to

conclude that because the organised life has ceased here that force which

hitherto actuated it has also become nothing; as little as to infer the

death of the spinner from the stopping of the spinning‐wheel. If a

pendulum, by finding its centre of gravity, at last comes to rest, and

thus its individual apparent life has ceased, no one will imagine that

gravitation is now annihilated; but every one comprehends that, after as

before, it is active in innumerable phenomena. Certainly it might be urged

against this comparison, that here also, in this pendulum, gravitation has

not ceased to be active, but only to manifest its activity palpably;

whoever insists on this may think, instead, of an electrical body, in

which, after its discharge, electricity has actually ceased to be active.

I only wished to show in this that we ourselves recognise in the lowest

forces of nature an eternity and ubiquity with regard to which the

transitory nature of their fleeting phenomena never makes us err for a

moment. So much the less, then, should it come into our mind to regard the

ceasing of life as the annihilation of the living principle, and

consequently death as the entire destruction of the man. Because the

strong arm which, three thousand years ago, bent the bow of Ulysses is no

more, no reflective and well‐regulated understanding will regard the force

which acted so energetically in it as entirely annihilated, and therefore,

upon further reflection, will also not assume that the force which bends

the bow to‐day first began with this arm. The thought lies far nearer us,

that the force which earlier actuated the life which now has vanished is

the same which is active in the life which now flourishes: nay, this is

almost inevitable. Certainly, however, we know that, as was explained in

the second book, only that is perishable which is involved in the causal

series; but only the states and forms are so involved. On the other hand,

untouched by the change of these which is introduced by causes, there

remain on the one side matter, and on the other side natural forces: for

both are the presupposition of all these changes. But the principle of our

life we must, primarily at least, conceive as a force of nature, until

perhaps a more profound investigation has brought us to know what it is in

itself. Thus, taken simply as a force of nature, the vital force remains

entirely undisturbed by the change of forms and states, which the bond of

cause and effect introduces and carries off again, and which alone are

subject to the process of coming into being and passing away, as it lies

before us in experience. Thus so far the imperishable nature of our true

being can be proved with certainty. But it is true this will not satisfy

the claims which are wont to be made upon proofs of our continued

existence after death, nor insure the consolation which is expected from

such proofs. However, it is always something; and whoever fears death as

an absolute annihilation cannot afford to despise the perfect certainty

that the inmost principle of his life remains untouched by it. Nay, the

paradox might be set up, that that second thing also which, just like the

forces of nature, remains untouched by the continual change under the

guidance of causality, thus matter, by its absolute permanence, insures us

indestructibility, by virtue of which whoever was incapable of

comprehending any other might yet confidently trust in a certain

imperishableness. “What!” it will be said, “the permanence of the mere

dust, of the crude matter, is to be regarded as a continuance of our

being?” Oh! do you know this dust, then? Do you know what it is and what

it can do? Learn to know it before you despise it. This matter which now

lies there as dust and ashes will soon, dissolved in water, form itself as

a crystal, will shine as metal, will then emit electric sparks, will by

means of its galvanic intensity manifest a force which, decomposing the

closest combinations, reduces earths to metals; nay, it will, of its own

accord, form itself into plants and animals, and from its mysterious womb

develop that life for the loss of which you, in your narrowness, are so

painfully anxious. Is it, then, absolutely nothing to continue to exist as

such matter? Nay, I seriously assert that even this permanence of matter

affords evidence of the indestructibility of our true nature, though only

as in an image or simile, or, rather, only as in outline. To see this we

only need to call to mind the explanation of matter given in 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 chapter I have explained that the great clinging

to life, or rather fear of death, by no means springs from knowledge, in

which case it would be the result of the known value of life; but that

that fear of death has its root directly in the _will_, out of the

original nature of which it proceeds, in which it is entirely without

knowledge, and therefore blind will to live. As we are allured into life

by the wholly illusory inclination to sensual pleasure, so we are retained

in it by the fear of death, which is certainly just as illusory. Both

spring directly from the will, which in itself is unconscious. If, on the

contrary, man were merely a _knowing_ being, then death would necessarily

be to him not only indifferent, but even welcome. The reflection to which

we have here attained now teaches that what is affected by death is merely

the _knowing_ consciousness, and the will, on the other hand, because it

is the thing in itself, which lies at the foundation of every phenomenon,

is free from all that depends upon temporal determinations, thus is also

imperishable. Its striving towards existence and manifestation, from which

the world results, is constantly satisfied, for this accompanies it as the

shadow accompanies the body, for it is merely the visibility of its

nature. That yet in us it fears death results from the fact that here

knowledge presents its existence to it as merely in the individual

phenomenon, whence the illusion arises that it will perish with this, as

my image in a mirror seems to be destroyed along with it if the mirror is

broken; this then, as contrary to its original nature, which is a blind

striving towards existence, fills it with horror. From this now it follows

that that in us which alone is capable of fearing death, and also alone

fears it, the _will_, is not affected by it; and that, on the other hand,

what is affected by it and really perishes is that which from its nature

is capable of no fear, and in general of no desire or emotion, and is

therefore indifferent to being and not being, the mere subject of

knowledge, the intellect, whose existence consists in its relation to the

world of idea, _i.e._, the objective world, whose correlative it is, and

with whose existence its own is ultimately one. Thus, although the

individual consciousness does not survive death, yet that survives it

which alone struggles against it—the will. This also explains the

contradiction that from the standpoint of knowledge philosophers have

always proved with cogent reasons that death is no evil; yet the fear of

death remains inevitable for all, because it is rooted, not in knowledge,

but in the will. It is also a result of the fact that only the will, and

not the intellect, is indestructible, that all religions and philosophies

promise a reward in eternity only to the virtues of the will, or heart,

not to those of the intellect, or head.

The following may also serve to illustrate this consideration. The will,

which constitutes our true being, is of a simple nature; it merely wills,

and does not know. The subject of knowledge, on the other hand, is a

secondary phenomenon, arising from the objectification of the will; it is

the point of unity of the sensibility of the nervous system, as it were

the focus in which the rays of the activity of all the parts of the brain

unite. With this, then, it must perish. In self‐consciousness, as that

which alone knows, it stands over against the will as its spectator, and,

although sprung from it, knows it as something different from itself,

something foreign to it, and consequently also only empirically, in time,

by degrees, in its successive excitements and acts, and also learns its

decisions only _a posteriori_, and often very indirectly. This explains

the fact that our own nature is a riddle to us, _i.e._, to our intellect,

and that the individual regards itself as having newly arisen and as

perishable; although its true nature is independent of time, thus is

eternal. As now the _will_ does not _know_, so conversely the intellect,

or the subject of knowledge, is simply and solely _knowing_, without ever

_willing_. This can be proved even physically in the fact that, as was

already mentioned in the second book, according to Bichat, the various

emotions directly affect all parts of the organism and disturb their

functions, with the exception of the brain, which can only be affected by

them very indirectly, _i.e._, just in consequence of those disturbances

(_De la vie et de la mort_, art. 6, § 2). But from this it follows that

the subject of knowledge, for itself and as such, cannot take part or

interest in anything, but for it the being or not being of everything,

nay, even of its own self, is a matter of indifference. Now why should

this purely neutral being be immortal? It ends with the temporal

manifestation of the will, _i.e._, the individual, as it arose with it. It

is the lantern which is extinguished when it has served its end. The

intellect, like the perceptible world which exists only in it, is a mere

phenomenon; but the finiteness of both does not affect that of which they

are the phenomenal appearance. The intellect is the function of the

cerebral nervous system; but the latter, like the rest of the body, is the

objectivity of the _will_. Therefore the intellect depends upon the

somatic life of the organism; but this itself depends upon the will. The

organised body may thus, in a certain sense, be regarded as the link

between the will and the intellect; although really it is only the will

itself exhibiting itself spatially in the perception of the intellect.

Death and birth are the constant renewal of the consciousness of the will,

in itself without end and without beginning, which alone is, as it were,

the substance of existence (but each such renewal brings a new possibility

of the denial of the will to live). Consciousness is the life of the

subject of knowledge, or the brain, and death is its end. And therefore,

finally, consciousness is always new, in each case beginning at the

beginning. The will alone is permanent; and, moreover, it is it alone that

permanence concerns; for it is the will to live. The knowing subject for

itself is not concerned about anything. In the ego, however, the two are

bound up together. In every animal existence the will has achieved an

intellect which is the light by which it here pursues its ends. It may be

remarked by the way that the fear of death may also partly depend upon the

fact that the individual will is so loath to separate from the intellect

which has fallen to its lot through the course of nature, its guide and

guard, without which it knows that it is helpless and blind.

Finally, this explanation also agrees with the commonplace moral

experience which teaches us that the will alone is real, while its

objects, on the other hand, as conditioned by knowledge, are only

phenomena, are only froth and vapour, like the wine which Mephistopheles

provided in Auerbach’s cellar: after every sensuous pleasure we also say,

“And yet it seemed as I were drinking wine.”

The terrors of death depend for the most part upon the false illusion that

now the ego vanishes and the world remains. But rather is the opposite the

case; the world vanishes, but the inmost kernel of the ego, the supporter

and producer of that subject, in whose idea alone the world has its

existence, remains. With the brain the intellect perishes, and with the

intellect the objective world, its mere idea. That in other brains,

afterwards as before, a similar world lives and moves is, with reference

to the intellect which perishes, a matter of indifference. If, therefore,

reality proper did not lie in the _will_, and if the moral existence were

not that which extends beyond death, then, since the intellect, and with

it its world, is extinguished, the true nature of things in general would

be no more than an endless succession of short and troubled dreams,

without connection among themselves; for the permanence of unconscious

nature consists merely in the idea of time of conscious nature. Thus a

world‐spirit dreaming without end or aim, dreams which for the most part

are very troubled and heavy, would then be all in all.

When, now, an individual experiences the fear of death, we have really

before us the extraordinary, nay, absurd, spectacle of the lord of the

worlds, who fills all with his being, and through whom alone everything

that is has its existence, desponding and afraid of perishing, of sinking

into the abyss of eternal nothingness;—while, in truth, all is full of

him, and there is no place where he is not, no being in which he does not

live; for it is not existence that supports him, but he that supports

existence. Yet it is he who desponds in the individual who suffers from

the fear of death, for he is exposed to the illusion produced by the

_principium individuationis_ that his existence is limited to the nature

which is now dying. This illusion belongs to the heavy dream into which,

as the will to live, he has fallen. But one might say to the dying

individual: “Thou ceasest to be something which thou hadst done better

never to become.”

So long as no denial of the will takes place, what death leaves untouched

is the germ and kernel of quite another existence, in which a new

individual finds itself again, so fresh and original that it broods over

itself in astonishment. What sleep is for the individual, death is for the

will as thing in itself. It would not endure to continue the same actions

and sufferings throughout an eternity without true gain, if memory and

individuality remained to it. It flings them off, and this is lethe; and

through this sleep of death it reappears refreshed and fitted out with

another intellect, as a new being—“a new day tempts to new shores.”

As the self‐asserting will to live man has the root of his existence in

the species. Accordingly death is the loss of one individuality and the

assumption of another, consequently a change of individuality under the

exclusive guidance of one’s own will. For in this alone lies the eternal

power which could produce its existence with its ego, yet, on account of

its nature, was not able to maintain it in existence. For death is the

_démenti_ which the essence (_essentia_) of every one receives in its

claim to existence (_existentia_), the appearance of a contradiction which

lies in every individual existence:

“For all that arises

Is worthy of being destroyed.”

But an infinite number of such existences, each with its ego, stands

within reach of this power, thus of the will, which, however, will again

prove just as transitory and perishable. Since now every ego has its

separate consciousness, that infinite number of them is, with reference to

such an ego, not different from a single one. From this point of view it

appears to me not accidental that _ævum_, αἰων, signifies both the

individual term of life and infinite time. Indeed from this point of view

it may be seen, although indistinctly, that ultimately and in themselves

both are the same; and according to this there would really be no

difference whether I existed only through my term of life or for an

infinite time.

Certainly, however, we cannot obtain an idea of all that is said above

entirely without time‐concepts; yet when we are dealing with the thing in

itself these ought to be excluded. But it belongs to the unalterable

limitations of our intellect that it can never entirely cast off this

first and most immediate form of all its ideas, in order to operate

without it. Therefore we certainly come here upon a kind of

metempsychosis, although with the important difference that it does not

concern the whole ψυχη, not the _knowing_ being, but the _will_ alone; and

thus, with the consciousness that the form of time only enters here as an

unavoidable concession to the limitation of our intellect, so many

absurdities which accompany the doctrine of metempsychosis disappear. If,

indeed, we now call in the assistance of the fact, to be explained in

chapter 43, that the character, _i.e._, the will, is inherited from the

father, and the intellect, on the other hand, from the mother, it agrees

very well with our view that the will of a man, in itself individual,

separated itself in death from the intellect received from the mother in

generation, and in accordance with its now modified nature, under the

guidance of the absolutely necessary course of the world harmonising with

this, received through a new generation a new intellect, with which it

became a new being, which had no recollection of an earlier existence; for

the intellect, which alone has the faculty of memory, is the mortal part

or the form, while the will is the eternal part, the substance. In

accordance with this, this doctrine is more correctly denoted by the word

palingenesis than by metempsychosis. These constant new births, then,

constitute the succession of the life‐dreams of a will which in itself is

indestructible, until, instructed and improved by so much and such various

successive knowledge in a constantly new form, it abolishes or abrogates

itself.

The true and, so to speak, esoteric doctrine of Buddhism, as we have come

to know it through the latest investigations, also agrees with this view,

for it teaches not metempsychosis, but a peculiar palingenesis, resting

upon a moral basis which it works out and explains with great profundity.

This may be seen from the exposition of the subject, well worth reading

and pondering, which is given in Spence Hardy’s “Manual of Buddhism,” pp.

394‐96 (with which compare pp. 429, 440, and 445 of the same book), the

confirmation of which is to be found in Taylor’s “_Prabodh Chandro Daya_,”

London, 1812, p. 35; also in Sangermano’s “Burmese Empire,” p. 6, and in

the “Asiatic Researches,” vol. vi. p. 179, and vol. ix. p. 256. The very

useful German compendium of Buddhism by Köppen is also right upon this

point. Yet for the great mass of Buddhists this doctrine is too subtle;

therefore to them simple metempsychosis is preached as a comprehensible

substitute.

Besides, it must not be neglected that even empirical grounds support a

palingenesis of this kind. As a matter of fact there does exist a

connection between the birth of the newly appearing beings and the death

of those that are worn out. It shows itself in the great fruitfulness of

the human race which appears as a consequence of devastating diseases.

When in the fourteenth century the black death had for the most part

depopulated the old world, a quite abnormal fruitfulness appeared among

the human race, and twin‐births were very frequent. The circumstance was

also very remarkable that none of the children born at this time obtained

their full number of teeth; thus nature, exerting itself to the utmost,

was niggardly in details. This is related by F. Schnurrer, “_Chronik der

Seuchen_,” 1825. Casper also, “_Ueber die wahrscheinliche Lebensdauer des

Menschen_,” 1835, confirms the principle that the number of births in a

given population has the most decided influence upon the length of life

and mortality in it, as this always keeps pace with the mortality: so that

always and everywhere the deaths and the births increase and decrease in

like proportion; which he places beyond doubt by an accumulation of

evidence collected from many lands and their various provinces. And yet it

is impossible that there can be a _physical_ causal connection between my

early death and the fruitfulness of a marriage with which I have nothing

to do, or conversely. Thus here the metaphysical appears undeniably and in

a stupendous manner as the immediate ground of explanation of the

physical. Every new‐born being indeed comes fresh and blithe into the new

existence, and enjoys it as a free gift: but there is, and can be, nothing

freely given. Its fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of

a worn‐out existence which has perished, but which contained the

indestructible seed out of which this new existence has arisen: they are

_one_ being. To show the bridge between the two would certainly be the

solution of a great riddle.

The great truth which is expressed here has never been entirely

unacknowledged, although it could not be reduced to its exact and correct

meaning, which is only possible through the doctrine of the primacy and

metaphysical nature of the will and the secondary, merely organic nature

of the intellect. We find the doctrine of metempsychosis, springing from

the earliest and noblest ages of the human race, always spread abroad in

the earth as the belief of the great majority of mankind, nay, really as

the teaching of all religions, with the exception of that of the Jews and

the two which have proceeded from it: in the most subtle form, however,

and coming nearest to the truth, as has already been mentioned, in

Buddhism. Accordingly, while Christians console themselves with the

thought of meeting again in another world, in which one regains one’s

complete personality and knows oneself at once, in those other religions

the meeting again is already going on now, only incognito. In the

succession of births, and by virtue of metempsychosis or palingenesis, the

persons who now stand in close connection or contact with us will also be

born along with us at the next birth, and will have the same or analogous

relations and sentiments towards us as now, whether these are of a

friendly or a hostile description. (_Cf._, for example, Spence Hardy’s

“Manual of Buddhism,” p. 162.) Recognition is certainly here limited to an

obscure intimation, a reminiscence which cannot be brought to distinct

consciousness, and refers to an infinitely distant time;—with the

exception, however, of Buddha himself, who has the prerogative of

distinctly knowing his own earlier births and those of others;—as this is

described in the “Jâtaka.” But, in fact, if at favourable moment one

contemplates, in a purely objective manner, the action of men in reality;

the intuitive conviction is forced upon one that it not only is and

remains constantly the same, according to the (Platonic) Idea, but also

that the present generation, in its true inner nature, is precisely and

substantially identical with every generation that has been before it. The

question simply is in what this true being consists. The answer which my

doctrine gives to this question is well known. The intuitive conviction

referred to may be conceived as arising from the fact that the

multiplying‐glasses, time and space, lose for a moment their effect. With

reference to the universality of the belief in metempsychosis, Obry says

rightly, in his excellent book, “_Du Nirvana Indien_,” p. 13: “_Cette

vieille croyance a fait le tour du monde, et était tellement répandue dans

la haute antiquité, qu’un docte Anglican l’avait jugée sans père, sans

mère, et sans généalogie_” (_Ths. Burnet, dans Beausobre, Hist. du

Manichéisme_, ii. p. 391). Taught already in the "Vedas," as in all the

sacred books of India, metempsychosis is well known to be the kernel of

Brahmanism and Buddhism. It accordingly prevails at the present day in the

whole of non‐Mohammedan Asia, thus among more than half of the whole human

race, as the firmest conviction, and with an incredibly strong practical

influence. It was also the belief of the Egyptians (Herod., ii. 123), from

whom it was received with enthusiasm by Orpheus. Pythagoras, and Plato:

the Pythagoreans, however, specially retained it. That it was also taught

in the mysteries of the Greeks undeniably follows from the ninth book of

Plato’s “Laws” (pp. 38 and 42, ed. Bip.) Nemesius indeed (_De nat. hom._,

c. 2) says: “Κοινη μεν οὐν παντες Ἑλληνες, οἱ την ψυχην αθανατον

αποφηναμενοι, την μετενσωματωσιν δογματιζουσι.” (_Communiter igitur omnes

Græci, qui animam immortalem statuerunt, eam de uno corpore in aliud

transferri censuerunt._) The “Edda” also, especially in the “Völuspá,”

teaches metempsychosis. Not less was it the foundation of the religion of

the Druids (_Cæs. de bello Gall._, vi.; _A. Pictet, Le mystère des Bardes

de l’ile de Bretagne_, 1856). Even a Mohammedan sect in Hindostan, the

Bohrahs, of which Colebrooke gives a full account in the “Asiatic

Researches,” vol. vii. p. 336 _sqq._, believes in metempsychosis, and

accordingly refrains from all animal food. Also among American Indians and

negro tribes, nay, even among the natives of Australia, traces of this

belief are found, as appears from a minute description given in the

_Times_ of 29th January 1841 of the execution of two Australian savages

for arson and murder. It is said there: “The younger of the two prisoners

met his end with a dogged and a determined spirit, as it appeared, of

revenge; the only intelligible expressions made use of conveyed an

impression that he would rise up a ‘white fellow,’ which it was considered

strengthened his resolution.” Also in a book by Ungewitter, “_Der

Welttheil Australien_,” it is related that the Papuas in Australia

regarded the whites as their own relations who had returned to the world.

According to all this, the belief in metempsychosis presents itself as the

natural conviction of man, whenever he reflects at all in an unprejudiced

manner. It would really be that which Kant falsely asserts of his three

pretended Ideas of the reason, a philosopheme natural to human reason,

which proceeds from its forms; and when it is not found it must have been

displaced by positive religious doctrines coming from a different source.

I have also remarked that it is at once obvious to every one who hears of

it for the first time. Let any one only observe how earnestly Lessing

defends it in the last seven paragraphs of his “_Erziehung des

Menschengeschlechts_.” Lichtenberg also says in his

“_Selbstcharacteristik_:” “I cannot get rid of the thought that I died

before I was born.” Even the excessively empirical Hume says in his

sceptical essay on immortality, p. 23: “The metempsychosis is therefore

the only system of this kind that philosophy can hearken to.”(31) What

resists this belief, which is spread over the whole human race and

commends itself alike to the wise and to the vulgar, is Judaism, together

with the two religions which have sprung from it, because they teach the

creation of man out of nothing, and he has then the hard task of linking

on to this the belief in an endless existence _a parte post_. They

certainly have succeeded, with fire and sword, in driving out of Europe

and part of Asia that consoling primitive belief of mankind; it is still

doubtful for how long. Yet how difficult this was is shown by the oldest

Church histories. Most of the heretics were attached to this primitive

belief; for example, Simonists, Basilidians, Valentinians, Marcionists,

Gnostics, and Manichæans. The Jews themselves have in part fallen into it,

as Tertullian and Justinus (in his dialogues) inform us. In the Talmud it

is related that Abel’s soul passed into the body of Seth, and then into

that of Moses. Even the passage of the Bible, Matt. xvi. 13‐15, only

obtains a rational meaning if we understand it as spoken under the

assumption of the dogma of metempsychosis. Luke, it is true, who also has

the passage (ix. 18‐20), adds the words ὁτι προφητης τις των αρχαιων

ανεστῃ, and thus attributes to the Jews the assumption that such an

ancient prophet can rise again body and all, which, since they know that

he has already lain between six and seven hundred years in his grave, and

consequently has long since turned to dust, would be a palpable absurdity.

In Christianity, however, the doctrine of original sin, _i.e._, the

doctrine of punishment for the sins of another individual, has taken the

place of the transmigration of souls and the expiation in this way of all

the sins committed in an earlier life. Both identify, and that with a

moral tendency, the existing man with one who has existed before; the

transmigration of souls does so directly, original sin indirectly.

Death is the great reprimand which the will to live, or more especially

the egoism, which is essential to this, receives through the course of

nature; and it may be conceived as a punishment for our existence.(32) It

is the painful loosing of the knot which the act of generation had tied

with sensual pleasure, the violent destruction coming from without of the

fundamental error of our nature: the great disillusion. We are at bottom

something that ought not to be: therefore we cease to be. Egoism consists

really in the fact that man limits all reality to his own person, in that

he imagines that he lives in this alone and not in others. Death teaches

him better, for it destroys this person, so that the true nature of man,

which is his will, will henceforth live only in other individuals; while

his intellect, which itself belonged only to the phenomenon, _i.e._, to

the world as idea, and was merely the form of the external world, also

continues to exist in the condition of being idea, _i.e._, in the

_objective_ being of things as such, thus also only in the existence of

what was hitherto the external world. His whole ego thus lives from this

time forth only in that which he had hitherto regarded as non‐ego: for the

difference between external and internal ceases. We call to mind here that

the better man is he who makes the least difference between himself and

others, does not regard them as absolute non‐ego, while for the bad man

this difference is great, nay, absolute. I have worked this out in my

prize essay on the foundation of morals. According to what was said above,

the degree in which death can be regarded as the annihilation of the man

is in proportion to this difference. But if we start from the fact that

the distinction of outside me and in me, as a spatial distinction, is only

founded in the phenomenon, not in the thing in itself, thus is no

absolutely real distinction, then we shall see in the losing of our own

individuality only the loss of a phenomenon, thus only an apparent loss.

However much reality that distinction has in the empirical consciousness,

yet from the metaphysical standpoint the propositions, “I perish, but the

world endures,” and “The world perishes but I endure,” are at bottom not

really different.

But, besides all this, death is the great opportunity no longer to be

I;—to him who uses it. During life the will of man is without freedom: his

action takes place with necessity upon the basis of his unalterable

character in the chain of motives. But every one remembers much that he

has done, and on account of which he is by no means satisfied with

himself. If now he were to go on living, he would go on acting in the same

way, on account of the unalterable nature of his character. Accordingly he

must cease to be what he is in order to be able to arise out of the germ

of his nature as a new and different being. Therefore death looses these

bonds; the will again becomes free; for freedom lies in the _Esse_, not in

the _Operari_. “_Finditur nodus cordis, dissolvuntur omnes dubitationes,

ejusque opera evanescunt_,” is a very celebrated saying of the Vedas,

which all Vedantic writers frequently repeat.(33) Death is the moment of

that deliverance from the one‐sidedness of an individuality which does not

constitute the inmost kernel of our being, but is rather to be thought of

as a kind of aberration of it. The true original freedom re‐enters at this

moment, which, in the sense indicated, may be regarded as a _restitutio in

integrum_. The peace and quietness upon the countenance of most dead

persons seems to have its origin in this. Quiet and easy is, as a rule,

the death of every good man: but to die willingly, to die gladly, to die

joyfully, is the prerogative of the resigned, of him who surrenders and

denies the will to live. For only he wills to die _really_, and not merely

_apparently_, and consequently he needs and desires no continuance of his

person. The existence which we know he willingly gives up: what he gets

instead of it is in our eyes _nothing_, because our existence is, with

reference to that, _nothing_. The Buddhist faith calls it Nirvana,(34)

_i.e._, extinction.