become puzzled about the _principium individuationis_, because the
principle of sufficient reason in some one of its forms seems to admit of
an exception. For example, if it seems as if some change took place
without a cause, or some one who is dead appears again, or if in any other
way the past or the future becomes present or the distant becomes near.
The fearful terror at anything of the kind is founded on the fact that
they suddenly become puzzled about the forms of knowledge of the
phenomenon, which alone separate their own individuality from the rest of
the world. But even this separation lies only in the phenomenon, and not
in the thing-in-itself; and on this rests eternal justice. In fact, all
temporal happiness stands, and all prudence proceeds, upon ground that is
undermined. They defend the person from accidents and supply its
pleasures; but the person is merely phenomenon, and its difference from
other individuals, and exemption from the sufferings which they endure,
rests merely in the form of the phenomenon, the _principium
individuationis_. According to the true nature of things, every one has
all the suffering of the world as his own, and indeed has to regard all
merely possible suffering as for him actual, so long as he is the fixed
will to live, _i.e._, asserts life with all his power. For the knowledge
that sees through the _principium individuationis_, a happy life in time,
the gift of chance or won by prudence, amid the sorrows of innumerable
others, is only the dream of a beggar in which he is a king, but from
which he must awake and learn from experience that only a fleeting
illusion had separated him from the suffering of his life.