The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

^ In Eckermann’s “Conversations passage, for it occurs in the first of Goethe” (vol. i. p. 161), Goethe edition, p. 401, in exactly the same says : “ Our spirit is a being of a words, and it is also repeated at nature quite indestructible, and its p. 528 of that edition, as at the activity continues from eternity to close of § 65 of the present woxk, eternity. It is like the sun, which The first edition was sent to him in seems to set only to our earthly December 1818, and in March 1819, eyes, but which, in reality, never when I was at Naples, he sent me sets, but shines on unceasingly.” his congratulations by letter, through Goethe has taken the simile from 1113^ si.^ter, and enclosed a piece of me ; not I from him. Without paper upon which he had noted the doubt he used it in this conversa- places of certain passages which had tion, which was held in 1824, in specially pleased him. Thus he bad consequence of a (possibly uncon- read my book, scious) reminiscence of the above

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when for a single moment some occasion calls it uy to his imagination. Agaiist the mighty voice of Nature jeflec^- tion can do little.

In man^ as ir^ the brxitc which d^es not think, the certainty that springs from his inmost conscioiMiiesg. that he Jijmself ^ jjTature, the world, predominates as a lasting frame of mind ; and on account (STthis no man IS otjiirvahIy^IiturbeCi>Y the thought of certain anJ never-distant death, but lives as if he would live for ever.

Indeed this is carried so far that we may say that no one IraQ^jally a lively conviction of the^eifiSmty^ol his death, otherwise there would be no great difference Fetween Ms frame of niind and that of a cpjrdsajiued^crh miniil. ^very one recognises that certainty in the abstract and theoretically, but lavs it aside like other theoretical truths which are not applicable to practice, without really receiving it into his 1 ivung ^oirsmousneii^ WFoover carefully considers this peculiarity of human character will see that the psychological explanations of it, from habit and acquiescence in the inevitable, are by no means sufficient, and that its true explanation lies in the deeper ground we have given.

The same fact explains the circumstance that at all times and among all peoples dogmas of some kind or other_^relating to the continued existence of the individual after death_arIse^^7iE?7M? Believed in, although the evidence in support of them must always be very insufficient, and the evidence against them forcible and varied.

But, in truth, this really requires no proof, but is recognised by the healthy understanding as a fact, and confirmed by the confidence that Nature never lies any more than she errs, but openly exMbits and naively expresses her action and her nature, while only we ourselves obscure it by our folly, in order to establish what is agreeable to our limited point of view.

But this that we have brought to clearest consciousness, that although the particular phenomenon of the will has a temporal beginning and end, the will itself as thingin-itself is not affected by it, nor yet the correlative of

THE WORLD ^5 WILL.

BK. IV

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all object, the knowing but never known subject, and that life is always assured to the will to live — this is not to be numbered with the doctrines of immortality. For permanence has no more to do with the will or with the pure subject of £nowm^~£Ee eteraar~eye of fKe~vg^irId , ffian transitoriness, for both are predicates that are only valid in timj^ and the jmU ^,a^^ pure subject of Jcnowing lie outside time. Therefore the egoism of the individual (this p^ic^ar phenomenon of will enlightened by tbe subject of knowing) can extract as little nourishment and consolation for his wish to endure through endless time from the view we have expressed, as he could from the knowledge that after his deatli the rest of the eternal W(^d would continue to exist, wTilch is Just ilie expression of the same view considered objeoTHE p. 365at ease as if there were no such thing as death, so Iohg"ai" it Is lface to fa(^ lifer