he one case, as in the other, we must accept on
faith and trust what we are told when we awake. Accordingly it will be
all the same to you whether your individuality is restored to you after
the lapse of three months or ten thousand years.

_Thras._ At bottom, that cannot very well be denied.

_Phil._ But if, at the end of those ten thousand years, some one has
quite forgotten to waken you, I imagine that you would have become
accustomed to that long state of non-existence, following such a very
short existence, and that the misfortune would not be very great.
However, it is quite certain that you would know nothing about it. And
again, it would fully console you to know that the mysterious power
which gives life to your present phenomenon had never ceased for one
moment during the ten thousand years to produce other phenomena of a
like nature and to give them life.

_Thras._ Indeed! And so it is in this way that you fancy you can
quietly, and without my knowing, cheat me of my individuality? But you
cannot cozen me in this way. I have stipulated for the retaining of my
individuality, and neither mysterious forces nor phenomena can console
me for the loss of it. It is dear to me, and I shall not let it go.

_Phil._ That is to say, you regard your individuality as something so
very delightful, excellent, perfect, and incomparable that there is
nothing better than it; would you not exchange it for another, according
to what is told us, that is better and more lasting?

_Thras._ Look here, be my individuality what it may, it is myself,

"For God is God, and I am I."

I--I--I want to exist! That is what I care about, and not an existence
which has to be reasoned out first in order to show that it is mine.

_Phil._ Look what you are doing! When you say, _I--I--I want to exist_
you alone do not say this, but everything, absolutely everything, that
has only a vestige of consciousness. Consequently this desire of yours
is just that which is _not_ individual but which is common to all
without distinction. It does not proceed from individuality, but from
_existence_ in general; it is the essential in everything that exists,
nay, it is _that_ whereby anything has existence at all; accordingly it
is concerned and satisfied only with existence _in general_ and not with
any definite individual existence; this is not its aim. It has the
appearance of being so because it can attain consciousness only in an
individual existenc