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That is to say, you regard your individuality as something so very delightful, excellent, perfect, and incomparable that there is nothing better than it; would you not exchange it for another, according to what is told us, that is better and more lasting? Thras. Look here, be my individuality what it may, it is myself, "For God is God, and I am I." I I I want to exist!

And again, it would fully console you to know that the mysterious power which gives life to your present phenomenon had never ceased for one moment during the ten thousand years to produce other phenomena of a like nature and to give them life. Thras. Indeed! And so it is in this way that you fancy you can quietly, and without my knowing, cheat me of my individuality?

But, in truth, man is like the rest, a poor animal, whose powers are calculated only to maintain him during his existence; therefore he requires to have his ears always open to announce of themselves, by night as by day, the approach of the pursuer. Thrasymachos. Tell me briefly, what shall I be after my death? Be clear and precise. Philalethes. Everything and nothing. Thras.

For in the one case, as in the other, we must accept on faith and trust what we are told when we awake. Accordingly it will be all the same to you whether your individuality is restored to you after the lapse of three months or ten thousand years. Thras. At bottom, that cannot very well be denied. Phil.

That is what I expected. You solve the problem by a contradiction. That trick is played out. Phil. To answer transcendental questions in language that is made for immanent knowledge must assuredly lead to a contradiction. Thras. What do you call transcendental knowledge, and what immanent?

This is what happens when transcendental knowledge is brought within the boundary of immanent knowledge; in doing this some sort of violence is done to the latter, since it is used for things for which it was not intended. Thras. Listen; without I retain my individuality I shall not give a sou for your immortality. Phil. Perhaps you will allow me to explain further.

Suppose I guarantee that you will retain your individuality, on condition, however, that you spend three months in absolute unconsciousness before you awaken. Thras. I consent to that. Phil. Well then, as we have no idea of time when in a perfectly unconscious state, it is all the same to us when we are dead whether three months or ten thousand years pass away in the world of consciousness.

But your old-fashioned Kantian doctrine is no longer understood. There has been quite a succession of great men in the metropolis of German learning Phil. German philosophical nonsense! Thras. such as the eminent Schleiermacher and that gigantic mind Hegel; and to-day we have left all that sort of thing behind, or rather we are so far ahead of it that it is out of date and known no more.

From all this it follows that individuality is not a state of perfection but of limitation; so that to be freed from it is not loss but rather gain. Don't let this trouble you any further, it will, forsooth, appear to you both childish and extremely ridiculous when you completely and thoroughly recognise what you are, namely, that your own existence is the universal will to live. Thras.