Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/296

280 same way as the attempt to think an equilateral, right-angled triangle, or a destruction or origination of matter, and similar impossibilities. Instead of what was intended, the feeling here presses upon us that the world is not less in us than we in it, and that the source of all reality lies within us. The result is really this: the time when I shall not be will objectively come; but subjectively it can never come. It might therefore, indeed, be asked, how far every one, in his heart, actually believes in a thing which he really cannot conceive at all; or whether, since the profound consciousness of the indestructibleness of our true nature associates itself with that merely intellectual experiment, which, however, has already been made more or less distinctly by every one, whether, I say, our own death is not perhaps for us at bottom the most incredible thing in the world.

The deep conviction of the indestructibleness of our nature through death, which, as is also shown by the inevitable qualms of conscience at its approach, every one carries at the bottom of his heart, depends altogether upon the consciousness of the original and eternal nature of our being therefore Spinoza expresses it thus: "Sentimus, experimurque, nos æternos esse." For a reasonable man can only think of himself as imperishable, because he thinks of himself as without beginning, as eternal, in fact as timeless. Whoever, on the other hand, regards himself as having become out of nothing must also think that he will again become nothing; for that an eternity had passed before he was, and then a second eternity had begun, through which he will never cease to be, is a monstrous thought. Really the most solid ground for our immortality is the old principle: "Ex nihilo nihil fit, et in nihilum nihil potest reverti." Theophrastus Paracelsus very happily says (Works, Strasburg, 1603, vol. ii. p. 6): "The soul in me has arisen out of something; therefore it does not come to nothing; for it comes out of something." He gives the true reason. But whoever