question and awaits the answer.

IMMORTALITY:[1] A DIALOGUE.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--The word
immortality--_Unsterblichkeit_--does not occur in the original; nor
would it, in its usual application, find a place in Schopenhauer's
vocabulary. The word he uses is _Unzerstoerbarkeit--indestructibility_.
But I have preferred _immortality_, because that word is commonly
associated with the subject touched upon in this little debate. If any
critic doubts the wisdom of this preference, let me ask him to try
his hand at a short, concise, and, at the same time, popularly
intelligible rendering of the German original, which runs thus: _Zur
Lehre von der Unzerstoerbarkeit unseres wahren Wesens durch den Tod:
Meine dialogische Schlussbelustigung_.]

THRASYMACHOS--PHILALETHES.

_Thrasymachos_. Tell me now, in one word, what shall I be after my
death? And mind you be clear and precise.

_Philalethes_. All and nothing!

_Thrasymachos_. I thought so! I gave you a problem, and you solve it
by a contradiction. That's a very stale trick.

_Philalethes_. Yes, but you raise transcendental questions, and you
expect me to answer them in language that is only made for immanent
knowledge. It's no wonder that a contradiction ensues.

_Thrasymachos_. What do you mean by transcendental questions and
immanent knowledge? I've heard these expressions before, of course;
they are not new to me. The Professor was fond of using them, but only
as predicates of the Deity, and he never talked of anything else;
which was all quite right and proper. He argued thus: if the Deity was
in the world itself, he was immanent; if he was somewhere outside it,
he was transcendent. Nothing could be clearer and more obvious! You
knew where you were. But this Kantian rigmarole won't do any more:
it's antiquated and no longer applicable to modern ideas. Why, we've
had a whole row of eminent men in the metropolis of German learning--

_Philalethes_. (Aside.) German humbug, he means.

_Thrasymachos_. The mighty Schleiermacher, for instance, and that
gigantic intellect, Hegel; and at this time of day we've abandoned
that nonsense. I should rather say we're so far beyond it that we
can't put up with it any more. What's the use of it then? What does it
all mean?

_Philalethes_. Transcendental knowledge is knowledge which passes
beyond the bounds of possible experience, and strives to determine the
nature of things as they are in themselves. Imm