objectification of the will, the permanent Ideas of being, fixed like the rainbow on the waterfall. This is temporal immortality. In consequence of this, notwithstanding thousands of years of death and decay, nothing has been lost, not an atom of the matter, still less anything of the inner being, that exhibits itself as nature. Therefore every moment we can cheerfully cry, “In spite of time, death, and decay, we are still all together!” Perhaps we would have to except whoever had once said from the bottom of his heart, with regard to this game, “I want no more.” But this is not yet the place to speak of this. But we have certainly to draw attention to the fact that the pain of birth and the bitterness of death are the two constant conditions under which the will to live maintains itself in its objectification, _i.e._, our inner nature, untouched by the course of time and the death of races, exists in an everlasting present, and enjoys the fruit of the assertion of the will to live. This is analogous to the fact that we can only be awake during the day on condition that we sleep during the night; indeed the latter is the commentary which nature offers us for the understanding of that difficult passage.(29) For the substratum, or the content, πληρωμα, or the material of the _present_, is through all time really the same. The impossibility of knowing this identity directly is just _time_, a form and limitation of our intellect. That on account of it, for example, the future event is not yet, depends upon an illusion of which we become conscious when that event has come. That the essential form of our intellect introduces such an illusion explains and justifies itself from the fact that the intellect has come forth from the hands of nature by no means for the apprehension of the nature of things, but merely for the apprehension of motives, thus for the service of an individual and temporal phenomenon of will.(30) Whoever comprehends the reflections which here occupy us will also understand the true meaning of the paradoxical doctrine of the Eleatics, that there is no arising and passing away, but the whole remains immovable: “Παρμενιδης και Μελισσος ανῃρουν γενεσιν και φθοραν, δια το νομιξειν το παν ακινητον” (_Parmenides et Melissus ortum et interitum tollebant, quoniam nihil moveri putabant_), _Stob. Ecl._, i. 21. Light is also thrown here upon the beautiful passage of Empedocles which Plutarch has preserved for us in the book, “_Adversus Coloten_,” c. 12:— “Νηπιοι; ου γαρ σφιν δολιχοφρονες εισι μεριμναι, Οἱ δη γινεσθαι παρος ουκ εον ελπιζουσι, Η τι καταθνησκειν και εξολλυσθαι ἁπαντη. Ουκ αν ανηρ τοιαυτα σοφος φρεσι μαντευσαιτο, Ὡς οφρα μεν τε βιωσι (το δη βιοτον καλεουσι), Τοφρα μεν ουν εισιν, και σφιν παρα δεινα και ἐσθλα Πριν τε παγεν τε βροτοι, και επει λυθεν, ουδεν αρ᾽ ἐισιν.”