Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/315

Rh fresh and original that it broods over itself in astonishment. What sleep is for the individual, death is for the will as thing in itself. It would not endure to continue the same actions and sufferings throughout an eternitv without true gain, if memory and individuality remained to it. It flings them off, and this is lethe; and through this sleep of death it reappears refreshed and fitted out with another intellect, as a new being – "a new day tempts to new shores."

As the self-asserting will to live man has the root of his existence in the species. Accordingly death is the loss of one individuality and the assumption of another, consequently a change of individualitt under the exclusive guidance of one's own will. For in this alone lies the external power which could produce its existence with its ego, yet, on account of its nature, was not able to maintain it in existence. For death is the démenti which the essence (essentia) of every one receives in its claim to existence (existentia), the appearance of a contradiction which lies in every individual existence:

"For all that arises Is worthy of being destroyed."

But an infinite number of such existences, each with its ego, stands within reach of this power, thus of the will, which, however, will again prove just as transitory and perishable. Since now every ego has its separate consciousness, that infinite number of them is, with reference to such an ego, not different from a single one. From this point of view it appears to me not accidental that ævum,, signifies both the individual term of life and infinite time. Indeed from this point of view it may be seen, although indistinctly, that ultimately and in themselves both are the same; and according to this there would really be no difference whether I existed only through my term of life or for an infinite time.

Certainly, however, we cannot obtain an idea of all that