Show WHAT IS DEATH 7 Aphorism and Apoptithcglfcum on the End of Individual Existence For THE DEMOCRAT by Leo HaHeli The following does not aim to be ado a-do matic presentation but only a rosary as it were of some brilliant pearls from the deep bosom of Schopenhaulks pessimistic pessi-mistic philosophy as best demonstrated in his great and grand chef dccuvrc Tho World as Will and Conception In his addenda to the fourth book of said work Chapter XLI treats on Death and Its Relations to the Indestructibility of Our Being as Such It is prefaced by a saying of the great ancient philosopher philos-opher LavTseuTavteKing All men unanimously desire to deliver themselves them-selves of death i they know not how to deliver themselves of life Death is the real inspirational genius of philosophy It is very doubtful whether without death there would be any philosophizing at all The brute lives without knowledge of death hence the brute individnum enjoys en-joys directly the entire permanence of the species being conscious of itself only as endless With man came simultaneously simulta-neously with reason necessarily the frightening certitude of death But as throughout in nature there is for every evil a remedy or at least a substitute thus the same relIc tion which gave the knowledge of death supplies metaphysical views which furnish fur-nish consolation and of which the brute is neither in need nor able It is principally princi-pally to this purpose that all religions and all philosophical systems are directed thus being the antidote of the certainty death produced by reflecting reason from her own means The degree however how-ever in which they attain this end is very much varied and surely some one religion or philosophy is sure to enable man much more than another to face death with placid countenance Brahmanism Brahm-anism and Buddhism which teach man to consider himself as the primal being thc Srahm to which all coming and going are foreign can do much in that direction more than systems sys-tems and religions which teach him that i be was made out of nothing and thatBKf existence begotten by another really only begin with his birth Consequently vo find in India a confidence and a disregard regard of death of which people in Europe and America have no idea Its It-s indeed a dangerous thing to force upon up-on mans mind by early teaching feeble and untenable conceptions concerning this important matter and thus to incapacitate in-capacitate him forever for the reception of the more correct and tenable ideas For instance to teach him that he has only just become something some-thing out of nothing consequently conse-quently has been nothing throughout an eternity and yet should be imperishable for the future is just as to teach him that he although through and through tho creation of another shall bo responsible through all eternity for his commissions and omissions We have the undeniable fact that according ac-cording to natural consciousness man not only fears death more than anything for himself but also mourns greatly over the death of his dear ones and this evidently evi-dently not egotistically over his own I loss but out of commiseration for tue i great misfortune that has befallen them hence he reproves as hardhearted and lovebarren he who in such a case does not mourn nor shows grief In a parallel line with this goes the fact that revengefulness revenge-fulness in its highest development seeks the death of the enemy as the greatest evil that can be inflicted Opinions vary accordiig to time and place but the will of Nature remains always al-ways and everywhere the same hence i is to be taken into consideration before all other things In this it seems clearly to declare that death is a great evil And that death is a serious thing is to be seen from the fact that life as everyone knows is no sport I think we are not worthy of any more than those two Indeed the dread of death is independent indepen-dent of all intellect the biute has it though it does not know death Everything Every-thing born brings it with itself into the world Hence there is inborn to every animal an-imal as the care for its selfpreservation and thus the dread of destruction it is this latter therefore and not the mere shirking from pain which shows itself in the cautious anxiety with which every brute seeks to protect itself and still more its offspring against any one likely to endanger it Why does the brute flee tremble and seek to hide itself Because it is instilled with will to live yet is doomed to eventual death and only tries to gain time Likewise by nature with man Tho greatest of evils the worst that anywhere can be threatened threat-ened is death the greatest terror tho terror of death Nothing impels us so irresistibly to the intensest sympathy as to see a fellowbeing in danger of life nothing is more horrible than an execution ex-ecution Knock at the tombs and ask the dead whether they want to rise again they would answer by shaking their heads Voltaire says One loves life but the Nothing has none the less its good side And again I dontknow what eternal life is but this onft is a sorry joke I If what causes us to see in death tome i thing so very terrible were the thought I not nonexistence we should think with equal terror of the time when we were not yet For it is irrefutably certain that nonexistence after death cannot be different dif-ferent from nonexistence before birth consequently no more deplorable An entire eternity has passed when we were not yet but that grieves I I us by no means But we deem it bard yea intolerable that after the momentary intermezzo of an ephemeral existence a second eternity shall follow in which we shall be 710 more Could it be that this thirst for existence was due to the fact that we had tasted of it and found it so delicious Certainly not sooner the experience made would awaken an insatiable longing for the Paradise lost of nonexistence Then we have the fact that wo always find in conjunction with the hope for an immor r 1 account The question as to our existence after death has been raised and discussed in print and speech ten thousand times oftener I of-tener than that a0 to our existence before I i our birth Theoretically however the i one is just as legitimate and immediate problem as the other moreover whoever who-ever solves the one would at once understand under-stand the other clearly We have fine declamations as to how absurd and shocking shock-ing it were to think that tho kind of man which encompasses the universe and has so many sublime thoughts bo laid into the grave with the body but nothing noth-ing is heard about the fact that this mind has allowed a whole eternity ere it made itself manifest with those qualities and that the universe had for long to try to get along without it Yet to Intellect uncorrupted by Will there presents itself no question more naturally than this An endless time has elapsed before my birth what was I all that time 1 |