Metaphysically, it might perhaps be answered, “I was always I; that is, all who during that time said I, were just I.” But let us look away from this to our present entirely empirical point of view, and assume that I did not exist at all. Then I can console myself as to the infinite time after my death, when I shall not be, with the infinite time when I already was not, as a well‐accustomed, and indeed very comfortable, state. For the eternity _a parte post_ without me can be just as little fearful as the eternity _a parte ante_ without me, since the two are distinguished by nothing except by the interposition of an ephemeral dream of life. All proofs, also, for continued existence after death may just as well be applied _in partem ante_, where they then demonstrate existence before life, in the assumption of which the Hindus and Buddhists therefore show themselves very consistent. Kant’s ideality of time alone solves all these riddles. But we are not speaking of that now. This, however, results from what has been said, that to mourn for the time when one will be no more is just as absurd as it would be to mourn over the time when as yet one was not; for it is all the same whether the time which our existence does not fill is related to that which it does fill, as future or as past. But, also, regarded entirely apart from these temporal considerations, it is in and for itself absurd to look upon not being as an evil; for every evil, as every good, presupposes existence, nay, even consciousness: but the latter ceases with life, as also in sleep and in a swoon; therefore the absence of it is well known to us, and trusted, as containing no evil at all: its entrance, however, is always an affair of a moment. From this point of view Epicurus considered death, and therefore quite rightly said, “ὁ θανατος μηδεν προς ἡμας” (Death does not concern us); with the explanation that when we are death is not, and when death is we are not (_Diog. Laert._, x. 27). To have lost what cannot be missed is clearly no evil. Therefore ceasing to be ought to disturb us as little as not having been. Accordingly from the standpoint of knowledge there appears absolutely no reason to fear death. But consciousness consists in knowing; therefore, for consciousness death is no evil. Moreover, it is really not this _knowing_ part of our _ego_ that fears death, but the _fuga mortis_ proceeds entirely and alone from the blind _will_, of which everything living is filled. To this, however, as was already mentioned above, it is essential, just because it is will to live, whose whole nature consists in the effort after life and existence, and which is not originally endowed with knowledge, but only in consequence of its objectification in animal individuals. If now the will, by means of knowledge, beholds death as the end of the phenomenon with which it has identified itself, and to which, therefore, it sees itself limited, its whole nature struggles against it with all its might.