From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



day, should have escaped his notice, but it is all the 

 more difficult to understand his blindness to, or his 

 prejudice against the metaphysical demonstration. 



The metaphysical proofs for the permanence of the 

 individual consciousness are two. 



The first is presented to our view by the field of 

 nature. Schopenhauer remarks that nature seems 

 everywhere and always to consider death, which is 

 apparently so much to be dreaded, as an unimportant 

 incident. She expresses this 



' by delivering over the life of every animal and 

 of man himself to the most insignificant accidents, 

 without interfering to save any. Think of the insect 

 placed on your path; the least deviation, the most 

 involuntary movement of your foot decides its life 

 or its death. Look at the slug, deprived of all 

 powers of fleeing, resisting, defending itself, or 

 hiding a prey to the first enemy that comes. Look 

 at the fish playing unconscious in the net about to 

 close; the frog, whose mere indifference is the bar 

 to its escape; look at the bird unconscious of the 

 hawk that hovers over it; the sheep whom the wolf 

 watches from its hiding-place. Provided with only 

 the shortest foresight, all these creatures play in 

 the midst of dangers which menace their every 

 moment. These creatures, made with such con- 

 summate art, are abandoned, without hope of return, 

 not only to the violence of the stronger, but to the 

 merest chance, to mischievous instinct of the first 

 comer, to the waywardness of children. 



* Does not this amount to a declaration by 

 Nature that the annihilation of the individual is a 

 matter of indifference. Nature very plainly declares 

 this, and she never lies. Well, if the Mother of all 

 things cares so little as to throw her children into 

 the midst of a thousand environing dangers, that 



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