_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.