It is otherwise with Schopenhauer. In agreement with Buddhism, Schopenhauer considered physical evil as the consequence of moral failure, and stated that Nature is the materialising of the Will to live, and is fashioned according to its moral quality. Like Buddhism, he also teaches that Nature has to await her liberation from humanity. When I pointed out the inadmissibility of translating vidjnâna as consciousness, I might have appealed to Schopenhauer's teaching, agreeing with esoteric Buddhism, of the merely physical quality and corresponding mortality of the intellect, as opposed to the metaphysical continuance of the Will .Consciousness depends upon the intellect; the intellect depends upon the organism. Only if we can deny for the latter destruction following upon death, would the possibility be given for the continuance of consciousness. But in death the organism perishes; only that continues which brought it forth, the Will. This only, and of itself, constitutes the identity of all the appearances of the same being separated by death. The comparison between sleep and death, which since the time of Homer has been frequently repeated, appears most significant in the form which Schopenhauer has given it: "What to the individual is sleep, that to the Will as thing in itself is death".

It is advisable here to mark the difference between metempsychosis and Palingenesis. The Indian religion taught metempsychosis, i.e., it presupposed continuity of the Will and the mind after death, and maintained the possibility of remembrance. Esoteric Buddhism, on the contrary, accepted Palingenesis; for Buddha recognised that only the Will endures after death; that the intellect, as the function of the brain, perishes with it.[The persistence of consciousness is independent of that intellect which as a "function of the brain perishes with it". Upâdâna is explained as the cause of birth, and is the seizing of the Skandhas, the re-union of which with the five senses and five gross elements forms the body. These Skandhas, which are declared to be five, are attributes sensible and intellectual: they are Rûpa, form; Vedanâ, sensation; Samdjne, idea; Samskâra, concepts; and Vidjnâna, consciousness. According to the authority of the Buddhist Church of Ceylon, these Skandhas carry on the individual identity from birth to birth. "The new personality of each succeeding reincarnation is the sum-total of the Skandhas or groups of attributes of the last". See "Buddha's Teaching." A.P Sinnett. Transaction xii, of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society - TRANSLATOR] But the ethical tendency of his doctrine determined him to take advantage of the illusion of the people, that the intellect endured, and that the remembrance of former embodiments was possible for the sage. On that account he taught metempsychosis (the continuance of mind and Will), instead of Palingenesis (the destruction and re-formation of the individuality according to the quality of its indestructible Will). Before Schopenhauer, only metempsychosis was taught, except by Empedocles, so that where elsewhere the designation Palingenesis appears, according to the above definition, it is not correct. Buddhism denied the knowledge of the transientness of the intellect, in harmony with the sentiment expressed by Wieland --

        "An illusion that makes me happy
        Is worth a truth that bears me to the ground".

Knowing the power of such a temptation, I understand Schopenhauer's energetic protest against every pretension to force a moral tendency in his works. Only in this manner could he present us the unshakable foundation for pure morality, and render it possible to recover the doctrine of Palingenesis.

"Death shows itself unconcealed as the end of the individual, but in this individual lies the germ for a new being. . . . The dying man perishes, but a germ remains out of which a new being goes forth, which steps into existence without knowing whence it comes, or wherefore it is just such as it i" (Parerga, ii. 292).

"The fresh existence of each new-born being is paid for through the age and death of the past life which has perished, but the undying germ has endured, out of which the new existence has arisen: they are one being" (W. a W., ii. 575).

From this it is evident that in the present all living beings possess the true germ of all future living beings; therefore in a manner these are already present" (Parerga, ii. 292).

We must leave the guarded manner of expression to which Schopenhauer confines himself in these quoted passages; we must step firmer now he has placed us on the airy pathway and cleared the dark track. Each one must recognise, This Will, to which in its affirmation individuality inheres, embodies itself anew when death has destroyed this my present manifesting personality. This knowledge, however, enables him to say: The being of the future manifestation is not only in a manner, but implicitly the same as the being which constitutes my present appearance, for it is my Individual Will. That this being after the destruction of its present appearance will not re-embody as an animal, is assured by the teleology of Nature. Life is a process of refinement. By virtue of a greater sensibility to pain, this process is fulfilled quicker at the stage reached by humanity than in the lower stages, and retrogression is also contrary to expediency in the fitness of Nature. Yet we have no reason to suppose that we are destined only to attain the goal on higher planes than those reached by man. For after the Will to live in its efforts for more perfect manifestation has reached this point, then there is at this stage the possibility, which is denied to animals, to negate the Will to live. When we also remember that the man in whom the Will to live still asserts itself with great force can only come to this determination after repeated Re-births, it will be evident that it is as man that he attains the negation of the Will to live, and endures the last death in order to be for ever freed from the laws to which are subject the manifesting appearances of the assertive Will.

It is incomprehensible how Schopenhauer can reiterate the remark that knowledge alone becomes changed in the course of a life, and with it the manner of action, but not the character. If we suppose persistence or the unchangeability of character, all ethical meaning is withdrawn from the doctrine of Palingenesis, and it ceases to be a moral postulate. Schopenhauer recognized the inappropriateness of his supposition. Seeking a means of escape, the strange idea occurred to him, that not during life, but in the hour of death, a change might take place in the character of an individual. "All those secret powers which are nevertheless rooted in ourselves, and which determine the eternal fate of the man, press together in the death-hour and come into action. Out of their conflict the way is formed which the individual now has to tread. His Palingenesis, that is to say, is prepared together with all the weal and woe which are comprised in it, and to which he is irrevocably destined. This is why the death-hour is of such an important, serious, solemn, and fearful character. It is a crisis in the highest meaning of the word; it is a last judgment" (Parerga, i. 238).

Experience daily teaches that the possibility of a change in character is usually confined within very narrow limits; yet even here we must see the standard of truth and the moral effect of the idea of Re-birth, as it teaches us to recognise that although man is unable to reach the goal in one course of life, he nevertheless is constantly approaching it, and thus the point arrived at in the death-hour appears as a station and Re-birth the farther journey from it.

The problem of conception presents much greater difficulty than the problem of death. As I have before stated, Buddha considered it entirely from one side, as he ascribed to the parents no share in the production of the qualities of their children. Schopenhauer also taught that in relation to the generated, generation only gives rise to the opportunity for the appearance of the Will, at this time and at this place; yet he did not ignore the transmission of the physical and mental qualities from parents to children. We must therefore follow his direction in the solution of this problem of the philosophy and seek information in the beaten track. Every illness of the body may be compared to the appearance of a battle of innumerable chemical ideas against the idea man. The death of man takes place through the victory of these lower chemical forces. If this is granted, we can also say, The origin of man is the victory of the idea man over these lower chemical ideas. The victor through the death of a man becomes a liberated Individual Will, whose incarnation takes place on the occasion of conception. But these chemical ideas at the time of their subjugation, as it were, by this Individual Will are also, through the act of conception, subject to the future parents, and speak their speech, so that the share of the parents in their children is easily recognizable.[There is one point that has been somewhat overlooked by the author on this subject of heredity and Karma, and that is why a particular entity should be born in a particular family or nation ; in fact, why, in the subjugation of the chemical ideas at the time of conception on the part of the future parents, the liberated Individual Will enters that incarnation and not any other. The law of heredity, instead of being opposed to the law of Karma, is its most essential support; the one could not work without the other. As the law of cause and effect obtains in the moral as well as the physical world, there must be cause why the entity has a particular parentage; This cause is to be found in the tendencies of the birth-seeking entity, an example of the law of least resistance. The conditions offered at the time of conception by the father and mother are responded to by the tendencies of the incarnating entity, and the heredity handed down in the evolution of the embryo is the means for their development, It may perhaps be urged that in that case we should always see the children like the parents, possessing the same tendencies, but this would be but a one-sided argument. The incoming entity possesses tendencies different to those of father and mother, and these will assert themselves when the original attracting tendency is exhausted. This may take place after a shorter or longer period, and determines the similarity of the child to its parents or parent. If, on the contrary, the attractive affinity has exhausted itself, we shall see strongly marked divergence as other tendencies come forward. - TRANSLATOR]

There can be but as little doubt on this point as that the being of the child constitutes an Individual Will which is separate from that of the father and mother, although identical with that which constituted the being of another embodiment which has been destroyed by death. In this way the similarity as well as the dissimilarity of brothers and sisters, and especially of blood-relations, in physical and moral respects is so easily explained, that it seems to me that herein is to be found the only correct solution of the problem.