Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/407

 quite justified in answering: "We could only act according to our being: for actions arise from nature. If our actions were bad, the fault lay in our nature: this is thine own work; punish thyself." And it is just the same with the imperishableness of our true being in death; for this cannot be seriously thought without the aseity of that being, and can even hardly be conceived without a fundamental separation of the will from the intellect. This last point is peculiar to my philosophy; but Aristotle had already proved the first thoroughly, by showing at length how that alone can be imperishable which has not arisen, and that the two conceptions condition each other: ''Ταύτα άλλἡλοις άκολουθεί και τό τε άλένητον άφθαρτον καί τὸ άφθαρτον άγένητον. . . . Τὸ γάρ γενητὸν καί τὸ φθαρτὸν άκολουθούσιν άλλἡλοις.—Εί γενητὀν τι, φθαρτὸν άνἁγκη'' (haec mutuo se sequuntur atque ingenerabile est incorruptibile et incorruptibile ingenerabile. . . . generabile enim et corruptibile mutuo se sequuntur.—si generabile est, et corruptibile esse necesse est). All those among the ancient philosophers who taught an immortality of the soul, understood it in this way; nor did it enter into the head of any of them to assign infinite permanence to a being having arisen in any way. We have evidence of the embarrassment to which the contrary assumption leads, in the ecclesiastical controversy between the advocates of Pre-existence, Creation and Traduction.

The Optimism moreover of all philosophical systems is a point closely allied to Ethics which must never fail in any of them, as in duty bound: for the world likes to hear that it is commendable and excellent, and philosophers like