object presupposes a subject; and not conversely: because everywhere the root of things must lie in that which they are for themselves, thus in the subjective, not in the objective, _i.e._, in that which they are only for others, in a foreign consciousness. Accordingly we found in the first book that the right starting‐point for philosophy is essentially and necessarily the subjective, _i.e._, the idealistic starting‐point; and also that the opposite starting‐point, that which proceeds from the objective, leads to materialism. At bottom, however, we are far more one with the world than we commonly suppose: its inner nature is our will, its phenomenal appearance is our idea. For any one who could bring this unity of being to distinct consciousness, the difference between the continuance of the external world after his death and his own continuance after death would vanish. The two would present themselves to him as one and the same; nay, he would laugh at the delusion that could separate them. For the understanding of the indestructibility of our nature coincides with that of the identity of the macrocosm and the microcosm. Meanwhile one may obtain light upon what is said here by a peculiar experiment, performed by means of the imagination, an experiment which might be called metaphysical. Let any one try to present vividly to his mind the time, in any case not far distant, when he will be dead. Then he thinks himself away and lets the world go on existing; but soon, to his own astonishment, he will discover that he was nevertheless still there. For he intended to present the world to his mind without himself; but the ego is the immediate element in consciousness, through which alone the world is brought about, and for which alone it exists. This centre of all existence, this kernel of all reality, is to be abolished, and yet the world is to go on existing; it is a thought which can be conceived in the abstract, but not realised. The endeavour to accomplish this, the attempt to think the secondary without the primary, the conditioned without the condition, that which is supported without the supporter, always fails, much in the same way as the attempt to think an equilateral, right‐angled triangle, or a destruction or origination of matter, and similar impossibilities. Instead of what was intended, the feeling here presses upon us that the world is not less in us than we in it, and that the source of all reality lies within us. The result is really this: the time when I shall not be will objectively come; but subjectively it can never come. It might therefore, indeed, be asked, how far every one, in his heart, actually believes in a thing which he really cannot conceive at all; or whether, since the profound consciousness of the indestructibleness of our true nature associates itself with that merely intellectual experiment, which, however, has already been made more or less distinctly by every one, whether, I say, our own death is not perhaps