Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανατου μελετη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise. Therefore it will be quite in order that a special consideration of this should have its place here at the beginning of the last, most serious, and most important of our books. The brute lives without a proper knowledge of death; therefore the individual brute enjoys directly the absolute imperishableness of the species, for it is only conscious of itself as endless. In the case of men the terrifying certainty of death necessarily entered with reason. But as everywhere in nature with every evil a means of cure, or at least some compensation, is given, the same reflection which introduces the knowledge of death also assists us to _metaphysical_ points of view, which comfort us concerning it, and of which the brute has no need and is incapable. All religious and philosophical systems are principally directed to this end, and are thus primarily the antidote to the certainty of death, which the reflective reason produces out of its own means. Yet the degree in which they attain this end is very different, and certainly _one_ religion or philosophy will, far more than the others, enable men to look death in the face with a quiet glance. Brahmanism and Buddhism, which teach man to regard himself as himself, the original being, the Brahm, to which all coming into being and passing away is essentially foreign, will achieve much more in this respect than such as teach that man is made out of nothing, and actually begins at birth his existence derived from another. Answering to this we find in India a confidence and a contempt for death of which one has no conception in Europe. It is, in fact, a hazardous thing to force upon a man, by early imprinting them, weak and untenable conceptions in this important regard, and thereby making him for ever incapable of taking up correct and stable ones. For example, to teach him that he recently came out of nothing, and consequently through an eternity has been nothing, but yet for the future will be imperishable, is just the same as to teach him that although he is through and through the work of another, yet he will be held responsible through all eternity for his actions. If, then, when the mind ripens and reflection appears, the untenable nature of such doctrines forces itself upon him, he has nothing better to put in its place, nay, is no longer capable of understanding anything better, and thus loses the comfort which nature had destined for him also, as a compensation for the certainty of death. In consequence of such a process, we see even now in England (1844), among ruined factory hands, the Socialists, and in Germany, among ruined students, the young Hegelians, sink to the absolutely physical point of view, which leads to the result: _edite_, _bibite_, _post mortem nulla voluptas_, and so far may be defined as bestialism.