ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE INDRSTRUC- TIBILITY OF OUR TRUE NATURE BY DEATH, Aoven I have treated this subject thoroughly and in its connection in my chief work, T nevertheless believe that a small selection of separate reflestions upon it, which always throw buck some light on an exposition, vill not be without value for many. One must read Jean Paul’s “Selina” in order to see how aan eminently grout mind becomes the victim of the absur- ities of a false conception, which he will not give up be. canse he has set his heart upon it, but is all*the same perpetually disturbed by absurdities which he cannot digest. Ibis the conception of the individaal continuance of our entire personal consciousness aiter death. Precisely tho fighting and struggling of Jean Paul proves that such con- cepts compounded of the false and true are not, a wholesome errors, but aro rather decidedly not only is the true Inowledge— between appearance and. the thing. structibility of our proper nature as untouched by ti causality, and change, made impossible by the false opposi tion of soul and body, as also by the raising of the whole porsonality to a thi elf which must eternally exist ‘but this false conception cannot even be firmly held as the I INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE By Dear, 241 representative of the truth, since the reason ever anew rises indignant against the absurdity lying in it, and then hhas to givo up therewith the trath which is amalgamated with it. For in the long run truth can only subsist in ite purity; mixed up with errors it participates in their falli- Vility as the granite crambles when its folapar is decayed, although quarts and mica ere not subject to euch decay, It goes baily therefore with smrogates of the truth. When in daily intercourse it is asked by ono of those many people who wish to know everything, but do not want to leam anything, as to continued existence after death, the most suitable and indeed, in the first instance, the most correct answer is: “After your death you will be what you were before your birth.” For it implics the wrong-headedness of the demand that a species of exis- tence which has a beginning shall be without end, besides containing the implication that there may be two kinds of being and two kinds of nothing according with it. Similarly one might answor, “ Whatover you will bo after your death, even if it be nothing, will be just as natural and suitable to you as your individual orgenie existence is now, thus you will have at most to feer the moment of transition, Yes, since mature consideration of the mattor aifords tho result, that complete non-existonco would bo pro- forable toan existonee such as ours. Thus the thought of the eessation of our existence, or of a time when wo. she ongor be, ought, as far as reason goes, to trouble us as little as the thought of the time when we were not, But since ‘To him, on the contrary, who on the objective and em. pirical path had pursued the plausible clue of materialism, and now full of alarm at eomplete destruction by death which confronts him therein, turns to us, we should perhaps249 SCHOPENEAUER’S ESSAYS, procure for him satisfaction in the shortest way and one most suited to his empirical mode of thought, if we de- monstratod to him tho dictinction between matter and the metaphysical force possession of it; ‘geneous formless fluidity as soon as it attains the requisite ‘temporatare, assumes the complicated and exactly deter- mined shapo of tho gonus and species of its bird. This is indeed, to a certain extent, a kind of generatio equivoca, and it is exceedingly probable that the hierarchical series ‘of animal forms arose from the fact that once in primitive times and in 2 happy hour it overlespt the type of animal to which tho agg belonged, toa higher one, At all erenta et from matter appears here most promi- lyin that by the least unfavourable eirenm- stance iteomes tonothing. Tn this way it becomes explicable that after an operation that has boen completed or sub- sequently prevented it can deviate from it without injury, a fact which points to a totally different permanence than that of the persistence of matter in time, If we conceive of a being which kmew, understood, and suw everything, the quostion whether we enduro after death would’ probably have no meaning for such a ‘one, sine beyond our present temporal inal existence enduring and easing would havo no significance, and would be indistinguishable conceptions, And accordingly neither the concept of destraction nor that of contiauance, would have any application, since these are borrowed from time, which is merely the form of the phenomenon. Tn the meantime we can only think of the indestruchbility of this core of our phenomenon as @ continuance of it, and indeed, properly speaking, only according to the schema of matter which under all changes of its form maintains it- aolf in time, If we dony it this continuance we regard our INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH, 243 temporal end as sn annihilation econling to the schema of form which vanishes when the mattor in which it imheres is taken away from it, Both are nevertheless perdBaate ele «Mo yivos, that i a transference of tho forms of the pheno- itself, But of an indestractibility which would be no continuance we can hardly form even an abstract idea, since all pereoption by which wo might confirm it fails us. In truth however the constant arising of now beings and the perishing of those already existent is to be regarded as ‘an illusion produced by the apparatus of two polished lenses (brain-functions), by which alone we can soo anything, ‘They are called space and time, and in their reciprocal interpenetration—causality. For all that we peresive under these conditions is mere phenomenon ; but wedo not know the things as they may be in themselves, that is indepen. dontly of our perception, This is propotly the kernel of the Kantian philosophy which, together with its content, one cannot too often call to mind in @ poriod when vena) charlatanry has by its stupefying process driven philosophy from Germany with the willing assistanee of people for whom truth and intelligence are the most indifferent things in the world, and wage and salary the most important, ‘How can we suppose on beholing the death of a human Yeing that a thiug-initself here comes to nothing? ‘That a phenomenon in time, that form of all phenomena, finds its end without the thing-in-itsel? being thereby affected is an immediate intuitive cognition of every man ; hence men have endeavoured to givo uttoranco to it at all times, im ‘the most diverse forms and expressions, but these aro all derived from the phenomenon in its special senso and only havo references thereto, Everyone feels that ho is something different froma being who has once been created from nothing by another being. In this way the assurance24 SCHOPENATER’S ESSAYS, ‘him that although death ean make an end of cannot make an end of kis existence, Man is and the animal to his present life regards himself as an animated nothing. For thirty ‘years ago ho was nothing end thirty years hence he will be again nothing. ‘The more clearly one is conscious of the transience, nothingness and dream-like nature of all things, by 50 much the more clearly is one conscious also of the ctemity of oue’s own inner nature. For only in opposition to this is the foregoing structure of things known, as the rapid motion of the ship ono is on, is only perceived when one looks towards the fixed shore and not when one looks at the ship itvelf. ‘The present has two halves, an objective end a subjective, ‘Tho objective alone has the perception of time for its form, and hence rolls ceaselessly forward. From this arises our vivid recollection of what is very long past, and the con- sciousness of our imporishability, in spite of our knowledge of the transience of our existence. Everyone thinks that his innermost core is so that the preeent contains and carvies about ver we may happen to live we always stand with our cone soidiiénesé in the centre of time, never at its terminations; and we might assume from this that everyone bore within himself the immovable centro of infinite time. ‘Th morvover, at bottom what gives him the confidence with which he lives on without continual fear of death, But whoever by virtue of the strength of bis memory and » will become more clearly conscious than others of the identity of the now in all time. Perhaps, indeed, INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH. 245 ‘his proposition is more correct taken conversely. Bub-at~ all events such a clearer consciousness of tho identity of all now is au essential requirement of the philosophic By means of it we apprehend that which is most fl ‘the now—as the only persistent. He who is in without, cannot doubt of the indestruct nature, He will rather understond that by his death the objective world, indeed, with the medium of its present ment, the intellect, perishes for him, but that this does not touch his existono, for there was a9 much reality within as without, Ho will say; with compl ay rd yeyov'e, xa by, cad daépevor (Sto, Fl 5 Vol. i. p. 201). ‘He who does not ‘admit this to be true must maintain the opposite, and say: “Time is something purely objeo- tivo and roal, ‘exists quite independently of me. T am only accidentally thrown into it, have only become participant in a small portion of it, whereby Ihave attained. toa transient reality Hike thousands of others before me who are uow no more, and I shall also very soon be nothing. ‘Time, on the contrary, is tho Real. Tt goes further without me.” In accordance with all this, Jife may certainly be regarded as a dream and desth as an awakening. But then the personality, the individual, belongs to the dreaming and not to the waking consciousness, for which reason death presents itself to the former as annihilation. It is still, at all events from this standpoint, not to be regarded as the transition to a state entirely new and strange to us, but rather only as the return to our original one, of which life was only a short episode. If in the meantime a philosopher should, perhaps, think ty of his own