Thras.—That I cannot deny.
Phil.—Now, suppose that after ten thousand years, one had forgotten to awake you at all, then I believe that the long, long state of non-being would become so habitual to you that your misfortune could hardly be very great. Certain it is, any way, that you would know nothing of it; nay, you would even console yourself very easily, if you were aware that the secret mechanism which now keeps your actual appearance in motion, had not ceased during all the ten thousand years for a single moment to establish and to move other beings of the same kind.
Thras.—In that manner you mean to cheat me out of my individuality, do you? I will not be fooled in that way. I have bargained for the continuation of my individuality, and none of your motives can console me for the loss of that; I have it at heart, and I never will abandon it.
Phil.—It seems that you hold individuality to be so noble, so perfect, so incomparable, that there can be nothing superior to it; you therefore would not like to exchange it for another one, though in that, you could live with greater ease and perfection.
Thras.—Let my individuality be as it may, it is always myself. It is I—I myself—who want to be. That is the individuality which I insist upon, and not such a one as needs argument to convince me that it may be my own or a better one.
Phil.—Only look about you! That which cries out—“I, I myself, wish to exist”—that is not yourself alone, but all that has the least vestige of consciousness. Hence this desire of yours, is just that which is not individual, but common rather to all without exception; it does not originate in individuality, but in the very nature of existence itself; it is essential to anybody who lives, nay, it is that through which it is at all; it seems to belong only to the individual because it can become conscious only in the individual. What cries in us so loud for existence, does so only through the mediation of the individual; immediately and essentially it is the will to exist or to live, and this will is one and the same in all of us. Our existence being only the free work of the will, existence can never fail to belong to it, as far, at least, as that eternally dissatisfied will, can be satisfied. The individualities are indifferent to the will; it never speaks of them; though it seems to the individual, who, in himself is the immediate percipient of it, as if it spoke only of his own individuality. The consequence is, that the individual cares for his own existence with so great anxiety, and that he thereby secures the preservation of his kind. Hence it follows that individuality is no perfection, but rather a restriction or imperfection; to get rid of it is not a loss but a gain. Hence, if you would not appear at once childish and ridiculous, you should abandon that care for mere individuality; for childish and ridiculous it will appear when you perceive your own essence to be the universal will to live.
Thras.—You yourself and all philosophers are childish and ridiculous, and in fact it is only for a momentary diversion that a man of good common sense ever consents to squander away an idle hour with the like of you. I leave your talk for weightier matters.
[The reader will perceive by the positions here assumed that Schopenhauer has a truly speculative stand-point; that he holds self-determination to be the only substantial (or abiding) reality. But while Aristotle and those like him have seized this more definitely as the self-conscious thinking, it is evident that Schopenhauer seizes it only from its immediate side, i. e. as the will. On this account he meets with some difficulty in solving the problem of immortality, and leaves the question of conscious identity hereafter, not a little obscure. Hegel, on the contrary, for whom Schopenhauer everywhere evinces a hearty contempt, does not leave the individual in any doubt as to his destiny, but shows how individuality and universality coincide in self-consciousness, so that the desire for eternal existence is fully satisfied. This is the legitimate result that Philalethes arrives at in his last speech, when he makes the individuality a product of the will; for if the will is the essential that he holds it to be, and the product of its activity is individuality, of course individuality belongs eternally to it. At the close of his Philosophy of Nature, (Encyclopædia, vol. II.,) Hegel shows how death which follows life in the mere animal—and in man as mere animal—enters consciousness as one of its necessary elements, and hence does not stand opposed to it as it does to animal life. Conscious being (Spirit or Mind as it may be called,) is therefore immortal because it contains already, within itself, its limits or determinations, and thus cannot, like finite things, encounter dissolution through external ones.—Ed.]
GOETHE’S THEORY OF COLORS.
From an exposition given before the St. Louis Philosophical Society, Nov. 2nd, 1866.
I.—Color arises through the reciprocal action of light and darkness.