Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/305

Rh to, or to deny of the subject. This just means: the problem is transcendent. In this sense death remains a mystery.

On the other hand, adhering to that distinction between phenomenon and thing in itself, we can make the assertion that, as phenomenon, man is certainly perishable, but yet his true being will not be involved in this. Thus this true being is indestructible, although, on account of the elimination of time-conceptions which is connected with it, we cannot attribute to it continuance. Accordingly we would be led here to the conception of an indestructibility which would yet be no continuance. Now this is a conception which, having been obtained on the path of abstraction, can certainly also be thought in the abstract but yet cannot be supported by any perception, and consequently cannot really become distinct; yet, on the other hand we must here keep in mind that we have not, like Kant, absolutely given up the knowledge of the thing in itself, but know that it is to be sought for in the will. It is true that we have never asserted an absolute and exhaustive knowledge of the thing in itself, but rather have seen very well that it is impossible to know anything as it is absolutely and in itself. For as soon as I know, I have an idea; but this idea, just because it is my idea, cannot be identical with what is known, but repeats it in an entirely different form, for it makes a being for other out of a being for self, and is thus always to be regarded as a phenomenal appearance of the thing in itself. Therefore for a knowing consciousness, however it may be constituted, there can be always only phenomena. This is not entirely obviated even by the fact that it is my own nature which is known; for, since it falls within my knowing consciousness, it is already a reflex of my nature, something different from this itself, thus already in a certain degree phenomenon. So far, then, as I am a knowing being, I have even in my own nature really only a phenomenon; so far, on the other hand, as I am directly this nature