a crystal, will shine as metal, will then emit electric sparks, will by means of its galvanic intensity manifest a force which, decomposing the closest combinations, reduces earths to metals; nay, it will, of its own accord, form itself into plants and animals, and from its mysterious womb develop that life for the loss of which you, in your narrowness, are so painfully anxious. Is it, then, absolutely nothing to continue to exist as such matter? Nay, I seriously assert that even this permanence of matter affords evidence of the indestructibility of our true nature, though only as in an image or simile, or, rather, only as in outline. To see this we only need to call to mind the explanation of matter given in chapter 24, from which it resulted that mere formless matter—this basis of the world of experience which is never perceived for itself alone, but assumed as constantly remaining—is the immediate reflection, the visibility in general, of the thing in itself, thus of the will. Therefore, whatever absolutely pertains to the will as such holds good also of matter, and it reflects the true eternal nature of the will under the image of temporal imperishableness. Because, as has been said, nature does not lie, no view which has sprung from a purely objective comprehension of it, and been logically thought out, can be absolutely false, but at the most only very one‐sided and imperfect. Such, however, is, indisputably, consistent materialism; for instance, that of Epicurus, just as well as the absolute idealism opposed to it, like that of Berkeley, and in general every philosophical point of view which has proceeded from a correct _apperçu_, and been honestly carried out. Only they are all exceedingly one‐sided comprehensions, and therefore, in spite of their opposition, they are all true, each from a definite point of view; but as soon as one has risen above this point of view, then they only appear as relatively and conditionally true. The highest standpoint alone, from which one surveys them all and knows them in their relative truth, but also beyond this, in their falseness, can be that of absolute truth so far as this is in general attainable. Accordingly we see, as was shown above, that in the very crude, and therefore very old, point of view of materialism proper the indestructibility of our true nature in itself is represented, as by a mere shadow of it, the imperishableness of matter; as in the already higher naturalism of an absolute physics it is represented by the ubiquity and eternity of the natural forces, among which the vital force is at least to be counted. Thus even these crude points of view contain the assertion that the living being suffers no absolute annihilation through death, but continues to exist in and with the whole of nature.