THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

242
THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
The subordination of the individual to thf* species as instrument of its
continuance appvars r-gcin in the apparent dependence of individual
vitality on the condition cf the reproductive cells.
The sexual irnp-:!^ i* to be regurded as the inner life of the tree (the
specie upon v,h:ch the life cf the indr. idual grows, like a leaf that is nourished
by the tree i*rjl a^Nts in nourishing the tree; this is why that impulse
is so strrvn-v, mid springs from the depths of our nature. To castrate an individual
rneiins to cat him off from the tree of the species upon which he
grows and thus severed, leaves him to wither; hence the degradation of his
mental and phwcal powers. Thai the service of the species, i. e., fecunda-
tion, is followed in the case of every animal individual by momentary
exhaustion and debility of all the powers, and in the case of most insects,
indeed, by speedy death, on account of which Celsus said, Seminis emissio
esi partis anitnae jattxra; that in the case of man the extinction of the
generative power shows that the individual approaches death; that excessive
use of this power at even' age shortens life, while on the other hand, temperance
in this respect increases all the powers, and especially the muscular
powers, on which account it was pirt of the training of the Greek athletes;
that the same restraint lengthens the life of the insect even to the following
spring; dl this t:> points the fact that the life of the individual is at bottom
onlv borrowed from that of the species. . . . Procreation is the highest
point; and after attaining to it. the life of the first individual quickly or
slowly sinks, while a new life ensures to nature the endurance of the species,
and repeats the same . phenomena. . . Thus the alternation of death and
reproduction is as the pulsebeat of the species. . . . Death is for the species
what sleop is for the individual; . . . this is nature's great doctrine of
immortality. . . * For the whole world, with all its phenomena, is the objectivity
of the one indivisible will, the Idea, which is related to all other
Ideas as harmony is related to the single voice, ... In Eckermann's Con-
versations uiitk Goethe (vol. i, p. 161), Goethe says: "Our spirit is a being
of a nature quite indestructible, and its activity continues from eternity to
eternity. It is like the sun, which seems to set only to our earthly eyes,
but which, in reality, never sets, but shines on unceasingly." Goethe has
taken the simile from me, not I from him. 61
Only in space and time do we seem to be separate beings; they constitute
the "principle of individuation" which divides life into distinct
organisms as appearing in different places or periods; space and time are
die Veil of Maya, Illusion hiding the unity of things. In reality there is
that the
only the species, only life, only will. "To understand clearly
individual is only the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself," to see in "the
constant change of matter the fixed permanence of form/* this is the
essence of philosophy. 62 "The motto of history should run: Eadem > sed
viiter."** The more things change, the more they remain the same.
"Ill, 310; I, 214; III, 312, 1270, 267; I, 206, 362.
% 357-S-
"Ill, 227. "The same things, but in different ways."