and are the cleverest; especially as it is very difficult to judge as to virtue, for, as it is said, only God sees the heart. The opportunities for displaying a noble character are rare, and a matter of chance; besides, many a girl has a powerful support to her virtue in her plainness; on the other hand, as regards understanding, those who themselves are gifted with it can judge with great certainty after some examination. The following is another practical application. In many countries, among others in South Germany, the bad custom prevails of women carrying burdens, often very considerable, upon the head. This must act disadvantageously upon the brain, which must thereby gradually deteriorate in the female sex of the nation; and since from that sex the male sex receives its brain, the whole nation becomes ever more stupid; which in many cases is by no means necessary. Accordingly by the abolition of this custom the quantum of intelligence in the whole nation would be increased, which would positively be the greatest increase of the national wealth. But if now, leaving such practical applications to others, we return to our special point of view, the ethico‐metaphysical standpoint—since we connect the content of chapter 41 with that of the present chapter—the following result will present itself to us, which, with all its transcendence, has yet a direct empirical support. It is the same character, thus the same individually determined will, that lives in all the descendants of one stock, from the remote ancestor to the present representative of the family. But in each of these a different intellect is given with it, thus a different degree and a different kind of knowledge. Thus in each of these life presents itself to it from another side and in a different light: it receives a new fundamental view of it, a new instruction. It is true that, since the intellect is extinguished with the individual, that will cannot supplement the insight of one course of life with that of another. But in consequence of each fundamentally new view of life, such as only a renewed personality can impart to it, its willing itself receives a different tendency, thus experiences a modification from it, and what is the chief concern, the will, has, in this new direction, either to assert life anew or deny it. In this way does the arrangement of nature of an ever‐changing connection of a will with an intellect, which arises from the necessity of two sexes for reproduction, become the basis of a method of salvation. For by virtue of this arrangement life unceasingly presents new sides to the will (whose image and mirror it is), turns itself about, as it were, without intermission before its sight, allows different and ever different modes of perception to try their effect upon it, so that upon each of these it must decide for assertion or denial, both of which constantly stand open to it, only that, if once denial is chosen, the whole phenomenon ceases