Kant, in his subjective procedure, brought to light the truth that time
cannot belong to the thing in itself, because it lies pre‐formed in our
apprehension. Now death is the temporal end of the temporal phenomenon;
but as soon as we abstract time, there is no longer any end, and this word
has lost all significance. But I, here upon the objective path, am trying
to show the positive side of the matter, that the thing in itself remains
untouched by time, and by that which is only possible through time,
arising and passing away, and that the phenomena in time could not have
even that ceaselessly fleeting existence which stands next to nothingness,
if there were not in them a kernel of the infinite. Eternity is certainly
a conception which has no perception as its foundation; accordingly it has
also a merely negative content; it signifies a timeless existence. Time is
yet merely an image of eternity, ὁ χρονος εἰκων τον αἰωνος, as Plotinus
has it; and in the same way our temporal existence is a mere image of our
true nature. This must lie in eternity, just because time is only the form
of our knowledge; but on account of this alone do we know our own
existence, and that of all things as transitory, finite, and subject to
annihilation.
In the second book I have shown that the adequate objectivity of the will
as the thing in itself, at each of its grades, is the (Platonic) Idea;
similarly in the third book that the Ideas of things have the pure subject
of knowledge as their correlative; consequently the knowledge of them only
appears exceptionally and temporarily under specially favourable
conditions. For individual knowledge, on the other hand, thus in time, the
_Idea_ presents itself under the form of the _species_, which is the Idea
broken up through its entrance into time. Therefore the species is the
most immediate objectification of the thing in itself, _i.e._, of the will
to live. The inmost nature of every brute, and also of man, accordingly
lies in the species; thus the will to live, which is so powerfully active,
is rooted in this, not really in the individual. On the other hand, in the
individual alone lies the immediate consciousness: accordingly it imagines
itself different from the species, and therefore fears death. The will to
live manifests itself in relation to the individual as hunger and the fear
of death: in relation to the species as sexual instinct and passionate
care for the offspring. In agreement with this we find nature, which is
free from that delusion of the individual, as careful for the maintenance
of the species as it is indifferent to the destruction of the individuals:
the latter are always only means, the former is the end. Therefore a
glaring contrast appears between its niggardliness in the endowment of the
individuals and its prodigality when the species is concerned. In the
latter case from _one_ individual are often annually obtained a hundred
thousand germs, and more; for example, from trees, fishes, crabs,