I will summarise the result of the foregoing as follows. Transcendental unity has separated itself in multiplicity of manifestation. A single Individual Will underlies each manifestation. After the destruction of one manifestation this Individual Will incorporates itself again anew, sweeping forward its individuality, and the following embodiment may be characterised as higher in comparison with that which has gone before. Each single Individual Will experiences, through the influence of others and the effect of his Will upon them, continual modification, which may be designated as the weakening of that which, with Schopenhauer, we call the "Will to live". [Mainländer's philosophy of liberation presents interesting details in its hypothesis on the conversion of gases into fluids and solid bodies] To attain this seems to me the direct object of the world viewed from the standpoint of physics. From the standpoint of ethics the negation of the Will to live becomes the goal; from the standpoint of metaphysics it is the return, after complete purification, to the transcendental unity.

As the celerity of a falling body increases as it falls, so also the Individual Will hastens quicker to its goal as it approaches it in each more perfect form. Each Individual Will is hindered by others in its efforts to completely unfold itself, and thus is presented the continual spectacle of strife, struggle, and exhaustion, with a constant change of victor. [Figuratively it may be said that the complete change of manifestation taking place through death and birth is only the exchange of old weapons for new] Each weakening of the violence of the self-asserting Individual Will means a purification of this Will, which, after the following destruction of the embodiment, carries the Will to a higher state of manifestation.

The higher the stage reached by the Individual Will, the greater its capacity for suffering. The essential difference between men and animals consists in the capacity of the former for conscious suffering. From the higher standpoint there can be no other classification of mankind than according to the degree of their capacity for this conscious suffering, for it shows how far the man is separated from the animal and how near he is to his goal. While the one only perceives as pain and misfortune that which directly opposes the lowest needs of his Will, and has but little susceptibility to the sorrows of others -- as, for example, to that sorrow produced by the knowledge of the surrounding misery of his fellow-creatures, another, who has attained through many lives to excess of sensitiveness over irritability and mere reproductive power, is receptive to influences which affect more strongly and powerfully the grasp of the assertive Will to live. The acuteness of the intellect stands in no relation to the moral character, as little as the sharpness of the sword to the bravery of its possessor. But superior knowledge possesses for condition the most perfect faculty for objective interest, and the susceptibility to conscious suffering raised to its highest It is therefore an absurdity to believe that the developed man can possess a vicious heart.

The blossom which expands from birth to birth as the capacity for conscious suffering is compassion. He whose heart from birth no longer suffers, but compassionates, must be considered as raised above the idea man, because for him the process of purification is already completed; he has reached the goal appointed to man. Christ, who from birth showed Himself as compassionate, must be recognised as Divine, and that without any dogmatic basis, but because we can no longer regard Him as an appearance called forth by the Will to live.

As we have shown, mankind, as the last stage of the manifestation of the Will striving towards liberation, the above words on Christ require some explanation which shall be given later. [The divine Wisdom or Logos is the spiritual Christos. When the soul of man has become set free from the power of desire, so that it can fully reflect the divine light, an incarnation of Deity takes place and the Christ is born The manifestation of the Will for liberation is unhindered by the Will to live, the Individual Will is no longer individual, but universal; the incarnation not a. person, but a power. The personal entity called Jesus or Buddha appears as the god; in reality it is but a part of the universal illusion. A quotation from the "Secret Doctrine" by H. P. Blavatsky will help still further to elucidate this subject". There never yet was a great world-reformer, whose name has passed into our generation, who was not a direct emanation of the Logos (under whatever name know to us), i.e. an essential incarnation of one of 'the seven' of the 'divine spirit who is sevenfold;' and who had not appeared before during the past cycles . . . reborn under various circumstances for the good of mankind, and for its salvation at certain critical periods, until in their last incarnations they had become truly only the 'parts of a part' on earth, though de facto the One Supreme in Nature' (ii 358). - TRANSLATOR]

We seek with eagerness and believe with tenacious anxiety in a moral development for the world. History shows us indeed that the nature peoples raise themselves from animal barbarity to higher culture, but it also proves that they again recede and miserably perish. Whoever, therefore, seeks the moral evolution of the world in the fate of nations, seeks in vain. Whoever has been accustomed to obtain consolation and hope from the so-called "continual progress of the civilised races", and therefore believes that the Overcomer of the world will draw down from heaven an Eden upon earth for future human beings, and that prisons and churches are so successfully occupied with ploughing the ground of the future Paradise that all weeds must wither and all good seed assuredly spring forth as of itself, will be grievously disappointed. Such a one may well draw back dismayed before that picture of the world that the great sage of our time has portrayed and reflected in the mirror of his work.

The ignorant lament in the hopelessness of pessimism. But whoever has grasped the deep significance of the doctrine of Re-birth may give up the illusion that civilisation and "progress" will cause the morality of the nations; may give it up consoled by the truth, " it is not the fate of the nation, which is but an appearance, but the fate of the individual which is to be morally decided". Therefore, we do not live and suffer to create a Utopia for future generations, but for our own sakes. The great complexity manifest in the lives and surroundings of the cultured classes of the present day needs some explanation. He who rushes into the open arms of physical science and thinks to dispense with the aid of metaphysics, will only too soon find the lifeless character of his support. Belief in eternal justice and moral development is not dead, but science has taken away the crutches upon which it rested without being able to provide it with sound limbs; it therefore lies prone on the ground, waiting for knowledge to raise it once more. The doctrine of Re-birth may here be appealed to, and that not arbitrarily and presumptuously, but of good right. It addresses itself to all those who find it impossible, from the scientific development of the age, to continue in the faith of the Church, but who are still conscious of the indwelling desire for purification and perfection. With the natural eye we cannot look over the barrier raised by birth behind us and death so near at hand, but the superior knowledge of our being as the Will to live is like the wings which danger taught Wieland to forge -- it carries our intellect over the high wall which Nature has set as a limit to our experience. The statement that it is the destiny of the individual to fully develop morally can only bring us conviction when we no longer seek its sanction in one single course of life; only on the basis of the doctrine of Re-birth can its truth enter our consciousness without danger of contradiction.

This belief was always so natural to men, that, in spite of all opposition, they held it fast for the sake of justice. It is not only children who believe that punishment follows in the footsteps of the offence, but also the greater number of our art critics are of the same opinion when they speak of the tragic fate of the heroes of the drama. When, by virtue of the doctrine of Re-birth, a man is convinced of the moral development of the individual, and becomes conscious of the expediency of Nature, which only knows necessity and not caprice, the thought that he experiences, and must experience, all sorrow for the purification of his being, will give him the greatest consolation in misfortune. The conventional belief of the educated classes is insufficient to give rise to that peaceful devotion of the real Christian, who endures every fate as the gift of God in patience and gentleness. External religiousness, with its weekly devotion and sanctimonious sentimentality, is a society lie, and nothing more. For this reason true-hearted men desired knowledge, which should not carry on a hypocritical play with holy things but should be in harmony with all that the heart desires as moral or the mind can imagine as ideal -- knowledge to strengthen them in danger and be present with them through life, both in action and inaction, a sun by day, a guiding star by night.

It may be asked, Has the idea of Re-birth only significance in that form which it has taken in India ? can it not also mould itself in harmony with all that we also aspire to and honour as truly Christian, moral, and lofty ? With the idle apathy of the begging monks of India we can have but little sympathy. The healthy feeling of the Greeks had already rebelled, against the stultification of the natural man, as followed in the Indian religion. Full development, fair unfolding, and a worthy realisation of our indwelling powers, are claims which we now place on the basis of moral necessity. The doctrine of Re-birth is in harmony with these claims as fully and entirely as it agrees with true Christianity. We appreciate the moral value of the Indian religion, but the same path is not for every one. The withdrawal of the Hindu from all human society does not appear at the present day the right path for us. The Christ-like love which has given us our salvation is not satisfied with indifference only to the enjoyments of the world; it gives us a surer path in compassion for its pains and energetic endeavour for their alleviation. Buddha also required the knowledge of sorrow, although he only recommended as means its contemplative consideration, while we imprint upon our souls the poet's words which admonish "through compassion to become wise". Yet Buddha also taught "not through enmity can enmity be overcome; only through want of enmity is it set at rest". But how different are the words of our Saviour: "Love your enemies". Buddhism does not apparently recognise this Christian love. [The hope that Buddha brought to mankind was the possibility of escape from transmigration, and no religion that has been put before the world possesses a more perfect morality than Buddhism. The moral law of Buddha is certainly the equal of the law of Christ, inasmuch as it also must be designated as a law of love. "Look with the same eye upon your own work and that of another, and extend your love to all living beings", this is the teaching of Buddhism. True, it does not directly inculcate "Love your enemies", but in the law of love as put forward by the Buddha there could be no enemy. It was the abnegation of self in every form, the selfless fulfilment of duty as householder, the selfless renunciation as disciple, and the selfless compassion as Buddha. -- TRANSLATOR] But in what else does it arise than in the presentiment of the union of beings, in the One underlying all manifestation ? What else but the desire of the various entities for the eternal union ? What the "tat twam asi" (that art thou) of the Brâhman says to the intellect of the scholar, that the Saviour speaks to the hearts of men in the words, "Love thy neighbour as thyself".

We possess a presentation of Schopenhauer's philosophy which attempts to eliminate from it the doctrine of Palingenesis: Philipp Mainländer in his "Philosophy of Liberation" teaches: "Death is succeeded by the absolute nothing; it is the perfect annihilation of each individual in appearance and being, supposing that by him no child has been begotten or born; for otherwise the individual would live on in that." Mainländer entered seriously into the philosophy, but fell into the mistake of the Materialists in thinking that with a short plank he could bridge over a wide abyss. With rare consistency Mainlander endeavoured to carry out his theories, and when he had completed his philosophical work, he put an end to his life. That the healthy mind of man should rebel against a doctrine leading to the result of self-destruction is as natural and certain as it is also true that previous to Schopenhauer all the reasons brought forward against such an act did not hold good with ingenuous critics.

It is only through the doctrine of Palingenesis or Re-birth that satisfactory arguments can be brought forward combating self-destruction, for it forces us to acknowledge its aimlessness. Suicide is an exceptionally useless attempt at escape from life; for it is followed by a new birth and a new life. There is no other path to freedom than purification through pain and sorrow; these lead to the liberation of the Will. Only from the standpoint of Palingenesis can any value be allowed to the reasons that Schopenhauer brings forward against self-destruction. They show that this is far from being negation of the Will to live, but, on the contrary, a phenomenally strong assertion of that Will. The doctrine of Palingenesis is evidently a powerful reason against suicide, for how can there be escape from life when the possibility of successful flight is excluded. It might here be in order to consider what ground there is for sorrow in the death of our neighbour, from the standpoint of this doctrine. A well-beloved friend dies; it is certainly only the external appearance that suffers death. But we have loved even this appearance. It gave us the opportunity to express the highest aspiration of the heart. We lament, therefore, bitterly at the grave that we have exercised this opportunity too little. [This lament touches the heart in the poem of Freiligrath:--

"O lieb' so lang du lieben kannst,
O lieb' so lang du lieben magst,
Die Stunde kommt, die Stunde kommt,
Wo du an Gräbern stehst und klagst"

Love while thou canst,
Love while thou mayst,
For the hour comes, the hour comes,
When at the grave thou shall stand and mourn.

The open grave earnestly admonishes us: Love the living, for they also must die.

To the heart overwhelmed by the sorrow of bereavement, this doctrine will give the same comfort and consolation which it gave to Lessing. Know that thou must experience this sorrow also for thy purification, but there awaits thee some time not only a recognition of thy friend, which may be but of little worth, but re-union. Know that, whether distant or near, this re-union is the complete satisfaction of that longing feeling with which thou hast regarded the departed personality, whose being is not destroyed, but, like thine own, will find liberation only in re-union. We have seen that the higher the manifestation of an Individual Will, the greater the capacity for the renunciation of individualism; but we may reverse it and say: The more perfectly the individuality develops, the nearer do we attain to the highest stage. Our first object, therefore, must be the cultivation of our particular faculties for the unfoldment of the individuality, the transformation of the natural to the pure human. From the higher standpoint this exercise of our powers is something different to placing them at the service of. modern civilisation. For modern civilisation requires just the denial of all that is true, real, original, and therefore godlike in us, and necessitates the use of that dexterity which modern education evokes when it places before us as court-master, neither Nature nor Art, but above all Utilitarianism. Such an education for mere industrial acquisition many will unwillingly find wanting in Lessing's "Education of the Human Race", and therefore will reject it as well as our conclusions, as in their opinion untimely. We desire no suppression of the powers that impel our actions, but their concentration and direction on the path leading to the highest. So struggling, we serve a culture which is hidden under the hypocritical cover of military civilisation, and we may recognise the blossoms which, in spite of this, still press forward to the light as real art and true religion. We are Europeans, not Hindus, our religion is Christianity. If this ground offers no good soil for the idea of Re-birth, the doctrine planted by us will not mature fruit, certainly none that will be able to thrive. The hypothesis of metempsychosis is foreign to Christianity, but the germ has sprouted. The knowledge of the transitoriness of the earthly and the essential reality of the substance of all manifestation is also the kernel of the Christian religion. We must further recognise the conviction from which our doctrine is nourished, and which we give expression to in the words: Each life is a refining process, as also that from which Christianity has unfolded its imperishable doctrine. Therefore the idea of Re-birth can closely attach itself to the Christian religion, and may appeal to the fact that Schopenhauer with reason called his philosophy the most Christian of all.

It is indeed true that the world, in spite of all religion, art, and science, is not more moral today than it was a thousand years ago. But are we then to expect that it should be? If we think of the human race as a society which aims at the purification of its members and actually obtains it, must this society as such appear moral ? Do not the purified members step out of such a society now without object for them? Do not other unpurified always step in ? Might not slight changes always be supposed, sometimes inclining to evil, sometimes to good ? Change that only once [ "Only once", perhaps for the Western world, but the advent of Buddha was also "a sudden beat for good". As it is written in the Bhagavad Gita, "Whenever there is decline of righteousness and uprising of unrighteousness, then I project myself into creation". This projection of divine power cannot be limited to one beat; the law of cyclic evolution draws forth the incarnation of the Will for liberation, and Krishna, Buddha, Christ mark the cusps of cycles as the saviors of mankind. - TRANSLATOR] manifested itself as a sudden beat for good, when Christ, an incarnation no longer of the Will to live, but of the Will for liberation, returned as Lord and Master of the society.

In agreement with Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner writes in "Religion und Kunst" (Religion and Art): "As the Saviour Himself is recognised as entirely without sin, as indeed incapable of sinning, the Will must have already been completely broken before His birth, so that He could no longer suffer, but only compassionate; and the root of this was necessarily to be recognised in His birth, which was suggested not by the Will to live, but by the Will for liberation". I will refrain from following the traces of metempsychosis in the works of art, but nevertheless mention must be made of Beethoven's Sonata Op. iii. Bülow, once characterising its two parts, very appropriately described one as Samsâra, the other as Nirvâna. It is further interesting to notice that Richard Wagner in the "Conqueror" has musically and artistically suggested the identity of Prakriti with a Brâhman's daughter, who had lived before and whose fate is related by Buddha. An actual result might truly be expected from this attempt, for music, as the direct materialisation of the Will only, is alone qualified to reproduce this identity clearly and directly. [To this knowledge is to be referred also the play of the Dodanaïschen priests. It explains the idea of the wandering of the soul by a circle of raised cymbals and their tones. As the tone passes through these, so the soul passes through the circle of various spheres.] We find close connection with the doctrine in "Parsifal", as when it is said of Kundry --

        "Here she lives today,
        Perhaps raised up anew
        To atone for the guilt of a former life".

And when she herself speaks of the sleep of death, and tells Klingsor of her former appearances.

In Ibsen's drama "Kaiser und Gallilaer" allusions to the same idea are to be found, as also in the "Ahasver" of Moser.

Zschokke's "Harmonius", Grosze's "Abul Kazims Seelenwanderung", and many others may also be mentioned. More important than such enumeration, were it even possible to complete the list, is the explanation obtained through this doctrine of the so-called "poetical justice". In the various tragic works of our great poets we see the heroes perish, and, speaking in dramatic parlance, the "villain triumph"; only the true popular poets have attempted to turn the stage into a tribune of justice, to proclaim the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice. Each course of life is there placed as a process of purification. The more clearly it is delineated, the more convincingly the poet carries it out as such, the more lively our interest, the more ardent our sympathy, manifesting itself as a kind of compassion. The death of Cordelia, when looked at in this light, no longer appears unrighteous, even if we consider her free from all the faults which Gervinus, as a second Lear, imputes, to her. Why such subtleties ? Why pluck a flower to pieces and seek after a worm, only to show that it will not always bloom and be fragrant ? Let each give way undisturbed to the joy of this and similar innocent maiden forms, as our poets picture them to us. Eternal justice is not put in question through their death, no matter how it result.

We may tell ourselves that a Cordelia draws nearer to the goal of eternal rest through her death, and that Richard III, even though he fall as hero in courageous manly fight, must yet suffer many sorrows before the strength of his will be broken for his salvation. Even the heroic death of the royal murderer, which has been thrown before the poet as injustice, as the glorification of vice, makes us wonder at the prophetic insight of the dramatist. Through this feature of bravery we become, as it were, induced to recognise in our hearts that this monster also is like unto us in his being, and is wandering on the way which life and sorrow lead him to those heights which we are already conscious of being nearer. What the valuable works of Balzac, Zola, and Ibsen appear so often to leave without satisfaction is the need of that knowledge of eternal justice which manifests itself through Re-birth. One life-journey considered alone represents neither justice nor expediency, as Ibsen shows in a masterly manner, while he forces us to see the impossibility of pure idealism of the sentiment, or even the impossibility of its enduring manifestation in the human race. Neither can the law of heredity offer consolation or hope; it shows but the rapid increase of vice. Experience, which can only judge the object as such, sanctions such disgusting phenomena as with rare truth to nature Zola pictures in "Les Rougon-Macquart, Histoire Naturelle et Sociale d'une Famille sous le Second Empire".

It appears as if each of the desired tales for the August Jenny's Prize Convention ought to be a complete counterpart of Zola's romance cycle. With Zola, that which constitutes the unity of person in various situations of life depends upon inherited inclination to vice, the manifestation of which continually increases; so also in this "histoire sur-naturelle" in contrast to the mere unity of the identity of person, there would be the representation of the different personalities. In such works it might be shown how the Will to live (the fearful manifestation of which is pictured in so marvellous a manner by Zola) also expresses itself as the Will for liberation. [Not for death, as Mainländers writes]. What for Zola must be the end, might here be the beginning. Proceeding from the Will to live in its most hateful expression, it would be possible to show the gradual purification of the same being in new forms, and how love being the manifestation of the Will for liberation, the purer its expression, the higher the stage attained by man in the moral respect; or rather it may be said, man attains to higher conditions of manifestation as he becomes capable of purer love and more ardent compassion. There is no need to fall into the error of prophesying an Eden upon earth, but it would be necessary always to keep in view the liberation of the Individual Will according to the doctrine of Palingenesis. As an example for our encouragement, it can be shown that even the Saviour had to resist temptation, make an effort and pass forward on His way, attaining to the highest. May such works arise! When they work the mosaic out of the idea, they will show the reader that every insignificant conquest of egotistic desire, every small expression and proof of compassion for the pain of living beings, animal or men, in spite of every license with which the world either flatters or constrains itself, means one step forward on the path towards the goal. Such a work will show, like our doctrine, that in the moral respect each one desires what he is able to perform at the stage he has reached, and therefore, the great sin of one does not weigh heavier than the little sin of another. "All by all ways attain unto me", says the transcendental unity.