Il6 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



of consciousness, there is no indestructible self, 

 death is simply subsidence into the absolute vague, 

 and immortality is therefore a delusion ; or, finally, 

 surrendering both of these dreams, they resort to 

 the future, and indulge in the illusion of hope, — 

 tJiis world can yet be made the abode of happiness, 

 and let us make it so. But, admonishes Hartmann, 

 all these fancies ignore the contradiction that lies 

 in the very heart of existence ; there is but one 

 plain moral in the drama of experience, and that is 

 the utter hopelessness of life. The world may not, 

 indeed, be the worst world possible, but its being is 

 certainly worse than its not being. It were better if 

 the world had never come to be. Ethics consequently 

 is summed up in the single precept. Make an end of it ! 

 For the Will being in its essence but wild unrest, 

 both metaphysics and experience teach that the 

 only way of escape from the misery inherent in 

 life is to bring the Will to quiescence ; or rather, 

 speaking plainly, to blot it out. And in conscious- 

 ness, seat though this is of sorrow while it lasts, we 

 have the light to the one sure way of deliverance ; as 

 consciousness is the preparation for the rescue of the 

 Idea from the chitch of the Will. The way of salva- 

 tion is the way of annihilation. Our sole intelligent 

 desire, won in the bitter school of experience, is the 

 longing for release from struggle, the wish to be 

 delivered from this delusive Maya of consciousness 



