the State, this may easily endanger the true end.
According to my explanation, the right of property arises only through the expenditure of labour upon things. This truth, which has already often been expressed, finds a noteworthy confirmation in the fact that it is asserted, even in a practical regard, in a declaration of the American ex‐ president, Quincey Adams, which is to be found in the _Quarterly Review_ of 1840, No. 130; and also in French, in the “_Bibliothèque universelle de Genêve_,” July 1840, No. 55. I will give it here in German (English of _Quarterly Review_): “There are moralists who have questioned the right of the Europeans to intrude upon the possessions of the aboriginals in any case, and under any limitations whatsoever; but have they maturely considered the whole subject? The Indian right of possession itself stands, with regard to the greatest part of the country, upon a _questionable_ foundation. Their cultivated fields, their constructed habitations, a space of ample sufficiency for their subsistence, and whatever they had annexed of themselves by personal labour, was undoubtedly by the laws of nature theirs. But what is the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey?” &c. In the same way, those who in our own day have seen occasion to combat communism with reasons (for example, the Archbishop of Paris, in his pastoral of June 1851) have always brought forward the argument that property is the result of work, as it were only embodied work. This is further evidence that the right of property can only be established by the application of work to things, for only in this respect does it find free recognition and make itself morally valid.
An entirely different kind of proof of the same truth is afforded by the moral fact that while the law punishes poaching just as severely as theft, and in many countries more severely, yet civil honour, which is irrevocably lost by the latter, is really not affected by the former; but the poacher, if he has been guilty of nothing else, is certainly tainted with a fault, but yet is not regarded, like the thief, as dishonourable and shunned by all. For the principles of civil honour rest upon moral and not upon mere positive law; but game is not an object upon which labour is bestowed, and thus also is not an object of a morally valid possession: the right to it is therefore entirely a positive one, and is not morally recognised.
According to my view, the principle ought to lie at the basis of criminal law that it is not really the man but only the deed which is punished, in order that it may not recur. The criminal is merely the subject in whom the deed is punished, in order that the law in consequence of which the punishment is inflicted may retain its deterrent power. This is the meaning of the expression, “He is forfeited to the law.” According to Kant’s explanation, which amounts to a _jus talionis_, it is not the deed but the man that is punished. The penitentiary system also seeks not so much to punish the deed as the man, in order to reform him. It thereby sets aside the real aim of punishment, determent from the deed, in order to attain the very problematic end of reformation. But it is always a doubtful thing to attempt to attain two different ends by _one_ means: how much more so if the two are in any sense opposite ends. Education is a benefit, punishment ought to be an evil; the penitentiary prison is supposed to accomplish both at once. Moreover, however large a share untutored ignorance, combined with outward distress, may have in many crimes, yet we dare not regard these as their principal cause, for innumerable persons living in the same ignorance and under absolutely similar circumstances commit no crimes. Thus the substance of the matter falls back upon the personal, moral character; but this, as I have shown in my prize essay on the freedom of the will, is absolutely unalterable.
Therefore moral reformation is really not possible, but only determent from the deed through fear. At the same time, the correction of knowledge and the awakening of the desire to work can certainly be attained; it will appear what effect this can produce. Besides this, it appears to me, from the aim of punishment set forth in the text, that, when possible, the apparent severity of the punishment should exceed the actual: but solitary confinement achieves the reverse. Its great severity has no witnesses, and is by no means anticipated by any one who has not experienced it; thus it does not deter. It threatens him who is tempted to crime by want and misery with the opposite pole of human suffering, ennui: but, as Goethe rightly observes— “When real affliction is our lot, Then do we long for ennui.”
The contemplation of it will deter him just as little as the sight of the palatial prisons which are built by honest men for rogues. If, however, it is desired that these penitentiary prisons should be regarded as educational institutions, then it is to be regretted that the entrance to them is only obtained by crimes, instead of which it ought to have preceded them.
That punishment, as Beccaria has taught, ought to bear a proper proportion to the crime does not depend upon the fact that it would be an expiation of it, but rather on the fact that the pledge ought to be proportionate to the value of that for which it answers. Therefore every one is justified in demanding the pledge of the life of another as a guarantee for the security of his own life, but not for the security of his property, for which the freedom, and so forth, of another is sufficient pledge. For the security of the life of the citizens capital punishment is therefore absolutely necessary. Those who wish to abolish it should be answered, “First remove murder from the world, and then capital punishment ought to follow.” It ought also to be inflicted for the clear attempt to murder just as for murder itself; for the law desires to punish the deed, not to revenge its consequences. In general the injury to be guarded against affords the right measure for the punishment which is to be threatened, but it does not give the moral baseness of the forbidden action. Therefore the law may rightly impose the punishment of imprisonment for allowing a flower‐pot to fall from a window, or impose hard labour for smoking in the woods during the summer, and yet permit it in the winter. But to impose the punishment of death, as in Poland, for shooting an ure‐ox is too much, for the maintenance of the species of ure‐oxen may not be purchased with human life. In determining the measure of the punishment, along with the magnitude of the injury to be guarded against, we have to consider the strength of the motives which impel to the forbidden action. Quite a different standard of punishment would be established if expiation, retribution, _jus talionis_, were its true ground. But the criminal code ought to be nothing but a register of counter‐motives for possible criminal actions: therefore each of these motives must decidedly outweigh the motives which lead to these actions, and indeed so much the more the greater the evil is which would arise from the action to be guarded against, the stronger the temptation to it, and the more difficult the conviction of the criminal;—always under the correct assumption that the will is not free, but determinable by motives;—apart from this it could not be got at at all. So much for the philosophy of law.
In my prize essay on the freedom of the will (p. 50 _seq._) I have proved the originality and unalterableness of the inborn character, from which the moral content of the course of life proceeds. It is established as a fact. But in order to understand problems in their full extent it is sometimes necessary to oppose opposites sharply to each other. In this case, then, let one recall how incredibly great is the inborn difference between man and man, in a moral and in an intellectual regard. Here nobleness and wisdom; there wickedness and stupidity. In one the goodness of the heart shines out of the eyes, or the stamp of genius is enthroned in his countenance. The base physiognomy of another is the impression of moral worthlessness and intellectual dulness, imprinted by the hands of nature itself, unmistakable and ineradicable; he looks as if he must be ashamed of existence. But to this outward appearance the inner being really corresponds. We cannot possibly assume that such differences, which transform the whole being of the man, and which nothing can abolish, which, further, in conflict with his circumstances, determine his course of life, could exist without guilt or merit on the part of those affected by them, and be merely the work of chance. Even from this it is evident that the man must be in a certain sense his own work. But now, on the other hand, we can show the source of these differences empirically in the nature of the parents; and besides this, the meeting and connection of these parents has clearly been the work of the most accidental circumstances. By such considerations, then, we are forcibly directed to the distinction between the phenomenon and the true being of things, which alone can contain the solution of that problem. The thing in itself only reveals itself by means of the forms of the phenomenon; therefore what proceeds from the thing in itself must yet appear in those forms, thus also in the bonds of causality. Accordingly it will present itself to us here as a mysterious and incomprehensible guidance of things, of which the external empirical connection would be the mere tool. Yet all that happens appears in this empirical connection introduced by causes, thus necessarily and determined from without, while its true ground lies in the inner nature of what thus manifests itself. Certainly we can here see the solution of the problem only from afar, and when we reflect upon it we fall into an abyss of thought—as Hamlet very truly says, “thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.” In my essay in the first volume of the Parerga “On the Appearance of Intention in the Fate of Individuals” I have set forth my thoughts upon this mysterious guidance of things, a guidance which indeed can only be conceived symbolically.
In § 14 of my prize essay on the foundation of morals there will be found an exposition of egoism, as regards its nature; and the following attempt to discover its root may be looked upon as supplementary to that paragraph. Nature itself contradicts itself directly, according as it speaks from the individual or the universal, from within or from without, from the centre or the periphery. It has its centre in every individual; for each individual is the whole will to live. Therefore, even if this individual is only an insect or a worm, nature itself speaks out of it thus: “I alone am all in all: in my maintenance everything is involved; the rest may perish, it is really nothing.” So speaks nature from the _particular_ standpoint, thus from the point of view of self‐ consciousness, and upon this depends the egoism of every living thing. On the other hand, from the _universal_ point of view,—which is that of the _consciousness of other things_, that of objective knowledge, which for the moment looks away from the individual with whom the knowledge is connected,—from without then, from the periphery nature speaks thus: “The individual is nothing, and less than nothing. I destroy millions of individuals every day, for sport and pastime: I abandon their fate to the most capricious and wilful of my children, chance, who harasses them at pleasure. I produce millions of new individuals every day, without any diminution of my productive power; just as little as the power of a mirror is exhausted by the number of reflections of the sun, which it casts on the wall one after another. The individual is nothing.” Only he who knows how to really reconcile and eliminate this patent contradiction of nature has a true answer to the question as to the perishableness and imperishableness of his own self. I believe I have given, in the first four chapters of this fourth book of the supplements, an adequate introduction to such knowledge. What is said above may further be illustrated in the following manner. Every individual, when he looks within, recognises in his nature, which is his will, the thing in itself, therefore that which everywhere alone is real. Accordingly he conceives himself as the kernel and centre of the world, and regards himself as of infinite importance. If, on the other hand, he looks without, then he is in the province of the idea the mere phenomenon, where he sees himself as an individual among an infinite number of other individuals, accordingly as something very insignificant, nay, vanishing altogether. Consequently every individual, even the most insignificant, every I, when regarded from within, is all in all; regarded from without, on the other hand, he is nothing, or at least as good as nothing. Hence upon this depends the great difference between what each one necessarily is in his own eyes and what he is in the eyes of others, consequently the egoism with which every one reproaches every one else.
In consequence of this egoism our fundamental error of all is this, that with reference to each other we are reciprocally not I. On the other hand, to be just, noble, and benevolent is nothing else than to translate my metaphysics into actions. To say that time and space are mere forms of our knowledge, not conditions of things in themselves, is the same as to say that the doctrine of metempsychosis, “Thou shalt one day be born as him whom thou now injurest, and in thy turn shalt suffer like injury,” is identical with the formula of the Brahmans, which has frequently been mentioned, _Tat twam asi_, “This thou art.” All true virtue proceeds from the immediate and intuitive knowledge of the metaphysical identity of all beings, which I have frequently shown, especially in § 22 of my prize essay on the foundation of morals. But just on this account it is not the result of a special pre‐eminence of intellect; on the contrary, even the weakest intellect is sufficient to see through the _principium individuationis_, which is what is required in this matter. Accordingly we may find the most excellent character even in the case of a very weak understanding. And further, the excitement of our sympathy is accompanied by no exertion of our intellect. It rather appears that the requisite penetration of the _principium individuationis_ would be present in every one if it were not that the _will_ opposes this, and by virtue of its immediate mysterious and despotic influence upon the intellect generally prevents it from arising; so that ultimately all guilt falls back upon the _will_, as indeed is in conformity with the fact.
The doctrine of metempsychosis, touched on above, deviates from the truth merely through the circumstance that it transfers to the future what already is now. It makes my true inner nature exist in others only after my death, while, according to the truth, it already lives in them now, and death merely removes the illusion on account of which I am not aware of this; just as an innumerable host of stars constantly shine above our heads, but only become visible to us when the one sun near the earth has set. From this point of view my individual existence, however much, like that sun, it may outshine everything, appears ultimately only as a hindrance which stands between me and the knowledge of the true extent of my being. And because every individual, in his knowledge, is subject to this hindrance, it is just individuation that keeps the will to live in error as to its own nature; it is the Mâyâ of Brahmanism. Death is a refutation of this error, and abolishes it. I believe that at the moment of death we become conscious that it is a mere illusion that has limited our existence to our person. Indeed empirical traces of this may be found in several states which are related to death by the abolition of the concentration of consciousness in the brain, among which the magnetic sleep is the most prominent; for in it, if it reaches a high degree, our existence shows itself through various symptoms, beyond our persons and in other beings, most strikingly by direct participation in the thoughts of another individual, and ultimately even by the power of knowing the absent, the distant, and even the future, thus by a kind of omnipresence.
Upon this metaphysical identity of the will, as the thing in itself, in the infinite multiplicity of its phenomena, three principal phenomena depend, which may be included under the common name of sympathies: (1) _sympathy proper_, which, as I have shown, is the basis of justice and benevolence, _caritas_; (2) _sexual love_, with capricious selection, _amor_, which is the life of the species, that asserts its precedence over that of the individual; (3) _magic_, to which animal magnetism and sympathetic cures also belong. Accordingly _sympathy_ may be defined as the empirical appearance of the metaphysical identity of the will, through the physical multiplicity of its phenomena, whereby a connection shows itself which is entirely different from that brought about by means of the forms of the phenomenon which we comprehend under the principle of sufficient reason.
Chapter XLVIII.(44) On The Doctrine Of The Denial Of The Will To Live.
Man has his existence and being either _with_ his will, _i.e._, his consent, or _without_ this; in the latter case an existence so embittered by manifold and insupportable sufferings would be a flagrant injustice.
The ancients, especially the Stoics, also the Peripatetics and Academics, strove in vain to prove that virtue sufficed to make life happy.
Experience cried out loudly against it. What really lay at the foundation of the efforts of these philosophers, although they were not distinctly conscious of it, was the assumed _justice_ of the thing; whoever was without guilt ought to be free from suffering, thus happy. But the serious and profound solution of the problem lies in the Christian doctrine that works do not justify. Accordingly a man, even if he has practised all justice and benevolence, consequently the αγαθον, _honestum_, is yet not, as Cicero imagines, _culpa omni carens_ (_Tusc._, v. i.); but _el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido_ (the greatest guilt of man is that he was born), as Calderon, illuminated by Christianity, has expressed it with far profounder knowledge than these wise men. Therefore that man comes into the world already tainted with guilt can appear absurd only to him who regards him as just then having arisen out of nothing and as the work of another. In consequence of _this_ guilt, then, which must therefore have proceeded from his will, man remains rightly exposed to physical and mental suffering, even if he has practised all those virtues, thus is not happy. This follows from the _eternal justice_ of which I have spoken in § 63 of the first volume. That, however, as St. Paul (Rom. iii. 21), Augustine, and Luther teach, works cannot justify, inasmuch as we all are and remain essentially sinners, ultimately rests upon the fact that, because _operari sequitur esse_, if we acted as we ought, we would necessarily be as we ought. But then we would require no _salvation_ from our present condition, which not only Christianity but also Brahmanism and Buddhism (under the name which is expressed in English by _final emancipation_) present as the highest goal, _i.e._, we would not need to become something quite different from, nay, the very opposite of what we are. Since, however, we are what we ought not to be, we also necessarily do what we ought not to do. Therefore we need a complete transformation of our mind and nature; _i.e._, the new birth, as the result of which salvation appears. Although the guilt lies in action, _operari_, yet the root of the guilt lies in our _essentia et existentia_, for out of these the _operari_ necessarily proceeds, as I have shown in the prize essay on the freedom of the will. Accordingly our one true sin is really original sin. Now the Christian myth makes original sin first arise after man came into existence, and for this purpose ascribes to him, _per impossibile_, a free will. It does this, however, simply as myth. The inmost kernel and spirit of Christianity is identical with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism; they all teach a great guilt of the human race through its existence itself, only that Christianity does not proceed directly and frankly like these more ancient religions: thus does not make the guilt simply the result of existence itself, but makes it arise through the act of the first human pair. This was only possible under the fiction of a _liberum arbitrium indifferentiæ_, and only necessary on account of the Jewish fundamental dogma, in which that doctrine had here to be implanted.
Because, according to the truth, the coming into existence of man himself is the act of his free will, and accordingly one with the fall, and therefore the original sin, of which all other sins are the result, appeared already with the _essentia_ and _existentia_ of man; but the fundamental dogma of Judaism did not admit of such an explanation. Thus Augustine taught, in his books _De libero arbitrio_, that only as Adam before the fall was man guiltless and possessed of a free will, but for ever after is involved in the necessity of sin. The law, ὁ νομος, in the Biblical sense, always demands that we shall change our doing, while our being remains unchanged. But because this is impossible, Paul says that no man is justified by the law; only the new birth in Jesus Christ, in consequence of the work of grace, on account of which a new man arises and the old man is abolished (_i.e._, a fundamental change of mind or conversion), can transfer us from the state of sinfulness into that of freedom and salvation. This is the Christian myth with reference to ethics. But certainly the Jewish theism, upon which it was grafted, must have received wonderful additions to adapt itself to that myth. In it the fable of the fall presented the only place for the graft of the old Indian stem. It is to be attributed just to that forcibly surmounted difficulty that the Christian mysteries have received such an extraordinary appearance, conflicting with the ordinary understanding, which makes proselytising more difficult, and on account of which, from incapacity to comprehend their profound meaning, Pelagianism, or at the present day Rationalism, rises against them, and seeks to explain them away, but thereby reduces Christianity to Judaism.
But to speak without myth: so long as our will is the same, our world can be no other than it is. It is true all wish to be delivered from the state of suffering and death; they would like, as it is expressed, to attain to eternal blessedness, to enter the kingdom of heaven, only not upon their own feet; they would like to be carried there by the course of nature.
That, however, is impossible. Therefore nature will never let us fall and become nothing; but yet it can lead us nowhere but always again into nature. Yet how questionable a thing it is to exist as a part of nature every one experiences in his own life and death. Accordingly existence is certainly to be regarded as an erring, to return from which is salvation: it also bears this character throughout. It is therefore conceived in this manner by the ancient Samana religions, and also, although indirectly, by real and original Christianity. Even Judaism itself contains at least in the fall (this its redeeming feature) the germ of such a view. Only Greek paganism and Islamism are entirely optimistic: therefore in the former the opposite tendency had to find expression at least in tragedy; but in Islamism, which is the worst, as it is the most modern, of all religions, it appeared as Sufism, that very beautiful phenomenon, which is completely of Indian spirit and origin, and has now continued for upwards of a thousand years. Nothing can, in fact, be given as the end of our existence but the knowledge that we had better not be. This, however, is the most important of all truths, which must therefore be expressed, however great the contrast in which it stands with the European manner of thought of the present day. On the other hand, in the whole of non‐Mohammedan Asia it is the most universally recognised fundamental truth, to‐day as much as three thousand years ago.
If now we consider the will to live as a whole and objectively, we have, in accordance with what has been said, to think of it as involved in an illusion, to escape from which, thus to deny its whole existing endeavour, is what all religions denote by self‐renunciation, _abnegatio sui ipsius_; for the true self is the will to live. The moral virtues, thus justice and benevolence, since if they are pure they spring, as I have shown, from the fact that the will to live, seeing through the _principium individuationis_, recognises itself in all its manifestations, are accordingly primarily a sign, a symptom, that the self‐manifesting will is no longer firmly held in that illusion, but the disillusion already begins to take place; so that one might metaphorically say it already flaps its wings to fly away from it. Conversely, injustice, wickedness, cruelty are signs of the opposite, thus of the deep entanglement in that illusion.
Secondly, however, these virtues are a means of advancing self‐ renunciation, and accordingly the denial of the will to live. For true integrity, inviolable justice, this first and most important of cardinal virtues, is so hard a task that whoever professes it unconditionally and from the bottom of his heart has to make sacrifices that soon deprive life of the sweetness which is demanded to make it enjoyable, and thereby turn away the will from it, thus lead to resignation. Yet just what makes integrity honourable is the sacrifices which it costs; in trifles it is not admired. Its nature really consists in this, that the just man does not throw upon others, by craft or force, the burdens and sorrows which life brings with it, as the unjust man does, but bears himself what falls to his lot; and thus he has to bear the full burden of the evil imposed upon human life, undiminished. Justice thereby becomes a means of advancing the denial of the will to live, for want and suffering, those true conditions of human life, are its consequence, and these lead to resignation. Still more quickly does the virtue of benevolence, _caritas_, which goes further, lead to the same result; for on account of it one takes over even the sufferings which originally fell to the lot of others, therefore appropriates to oneself a larger share of these than in the course of things would come to the particular individual. He who is inspired with this virtue has recognised his own being in all others. And thereby he identifies his own lot with that of humanity in general; but this is a hard lot, that of care, suffering, and death. Whoever, then, by renouncing every accidental advantage, desires for himself no other lot than that of humanity in general cannot desire even this long. The clinging to life and its pleasures must now soon yield, and give place to a universal renunciation; consequently the denial of the will will take place. Since now, in accordance with this, poverty, privation, and special sufferings of many kinds are introduced simply by the perfect exercise of the moral virtues, asceticism in the narrowest sense, thus the surrender of all possessions, the intentional seeking out of what is disagreeable and repulsive, self‐mortification, fasts, the hair shirt, and the scourge—all this is rejected by many, and perhaps rightly, as superfluous.
Justice itself is the hair shirt that constantly harasses its owner and the charity that gives away what is needed, provides constant fasts.(45) Just on this account Buddhism is free from all strict and excessive asceticism, which plays a large part in Brahmanism, thus from intentional self‐mortification. It rests satisfied with the celibacy, voluntary poverty, humility, and obedience of the monks, with abstention from animal food, as also from all worldliness. Since, further, the goal to which the moral virtues lead is that which is here pointed out, the Vedanta philosophy(46) rightly says that after the entrance of true knowledge, with entire resignation in its train, thus the new birth, then the morality or immorality of the past life is a matter of indifference, and uses here also the saying so often quoted by the Brahmans: “_Finditur nodus cordis, dissolvuntur omnes dubitationes, ejusque opera evanescunt, viso supremo illo_” (_Sancara, sloca 32_).
Now, however objectionable this view may be to many, to whom a reward in heaven or a punishment in hell is a much more satisfactory explanation of the ethical significance of human action, just as the good Windischmann rejects that doctrine, while he expounds it, yet whoever is able to go to the bottom of the matter will find that in the end it agrees with that Christian doctrine especially urged by Luther, that it is not works but only the faith which enters through the work of grace, that saves us, and that therefore we can never be justified by our deeds, but can only obtain the forgiveness of our sins through the merits of the Mediator. It is indeed easy to see that without such assumptions Christianity would have to teach infinite punishment for all, and Brahmanism endless re‐births for all, thus no salvation would be reached by either. The sinful works and their consequences must be annulled and annihilated, whether by extraneous pardon or by the entrance of a better knowledge; otherwise the world could hope for no salvation; afterwards, however, they become a matter of indifference. This is also the μετανοια και αφεσις ἁμαρτιων, the announcement of which the risen Christ exclusively imposes upon His Apostles as the sum of their mission (Luke xxiv. 47). The moral virtues are really not the ultimate end, but only a step towards it. This step is signified in the Christian myth by the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with which moral responsibility enters, together with original sin. The latter itself is in truth the assertion of the will to live: the denial of the will to live, in consequence of the appearance of a better knowledge, is, on the other hand, salvation. Between these two, then, lies the sphere of morality; it accompanies man as a light upon his path from the assertion to the denial of the will, or, mythically, from original sin to salvation through faith in the mediation of the incarnate God (Avatar); or, according to the teaching of the Vedas, through all re‐ births, which are the consequence of the works in each case, until right knowledge appears, and with it salvation (final emancipation), Mokscha, _i.e._, reunion with Brahma. The Buddhists, however, with perfect honesty, only indicate the matter negatively, by Nirvana, which is the negation of this world, or of Sansara. If Nirvana is defined as nothing, this only means that the Sansara contains no single element which could assist the definition or construction of Nirvana. Just on this account the Jainas, who differ from the Buddhists only in name, call the Brahmans who believe in the Vedas Sabdapramans, a nickname which is meant to signify that they believe upon hearsay what cannot be known or proved (“Asiat. Researches,” vol. vi. P. 474).
When certain ancient philosophers, such as Orpheus, the Pythagoreans, and Plato (_e.g._, in the “Phædo,” pp. 151, 183 _seq._, Bip.; and see _Clem.
Alex. strom._, iii. p. 400 _seq._), just like the Apostle Paul, lament the union of soul and body, and desire to be freed from it, we understand the real and true meaning of this complaint, since we have recognised, in the second book, that the body is the will itself, objectively perceived as a phenomenon in space.
In the hour of death it is decided whether the man returns into the womb of nature or belongs no more to nature at all, but —— —— ——: for this opposite we lack image, conception, and word, just because these are all taken from the objectification of the will, therefore belong to this, and consequently can in no way express the absolute opposite of it, which accordingly remains for us a mere negation. However, the death of the individual is in each case the unweariedly repeated question of nature to the will to live, “Hast thou enough? Wilt thou escape from me?” In order that it may occur often enough, the individual life is so short. In this spirit are conceived the ceremonies, prayers, and exhortations of the Brahmans at the time of death, as we find them preserved in the Upanischad in several places; and so also are the Christian provisions for the suitable employment of the hour of death by means of exhortation, confession, communion, and extreme unction: hence also the Christian prayers for deliverance from sudden death. That at the present day it is just this that many desire only proves that they no longer stand at the Christian point of view, which is that of the denial of the will to live, but at that of its assertion, which is the heathen point of view.
But he will fear least to become nothing in death who has recognised that he is already nothing now, and who consequently no longer takes any share in his individual phenomenon, because in him knowledge has, as it were, burnt up and consumed the will, so that no will, thus no desire for individual existence, remains in him any more.
Individuality inheres indeed primarily in the intellect; and the intellect, reflecting the phenomenon, belongs to the phenomenon, which has the _principium individuationis_ as its form. But it inheres also in the will, inasmuch as the character is individual: yet the character itself is abolished in the denial of the will. Thus individuality inheres in the will only in its assertion, not in its denial. Even the holiness which is connected with every purely moral action depends upon the fact that such an action ultimately springs from the immediate knowledge of the numerical identity of the inner nature of all living things.(47) But this identity only really exists in the condition of the denial of the will (Nirvana), for the assertion of the will (Sansara) has for its form the phenomenal appearance of it in multiplicity. Assertion of the will to live, the phenomenal world, the diversity of all beings, individuality, egoism, hatred, wickedness, all spring from _one_ root; and so also, on the other hand, do the world as thing in itself, the identity of all beings, justice, benevolence, the denial of the will to live. If now, as I have