it.  It is not the thing-in-itself, but only the phenomenon presented in the form of time; and therefore with a beginning and an end.  But your real being knows neither time, nor beginning, nor end, nor yet the limits of any given individual.  It is everywhere present in every individual; and no individual can exist apart from it.  So when death comes, on the one hand you are annihilated as an individual; on the other, you are and remain everything.  That is what I meant when I said that after your death you would be all and nothing.  It is difficult to find a more precise answer to your question and at the same time be brief.  The answer is contradictory, I admit; but it is so simply because your life is in time, and the immortal part of you in eternity.  You may put the matter thus:  Your immortal part is something that does not last in time and yet is indestructible; but there you have another contradiction!  You see what happens by trying to bring the transcendental within the limits of immanent knowledge.  It is in some sort doing violence to the latter by misusing it for ends it was never meant to serve.

Thrasymachos.  Look here, I shan’t give twopence for your immortality unless I’m to remain an individual.

Philalethes.  Well, perhaps I may be able to satisfy you on this point.  Suppose I guarantee that after death you shall remain an individual, but only on condition that you first spend three months of complete unconsciousness.

Thrasymachos.  I shall have no objection to that.

Philalethes.  But remember, if people are completely unconscious, they take no account of time.  So, when you are dead, it’s all the same to you whether three months pass in the world of consciousness, or ten thousand years.  In the one case as in the other, it is simply a matter of believing what is told you when you awake.  So far, then, you can afford to be indifferent whether it is three months or ten thousand years that pass before you recover your individuality.

Thrasymachos.  Yes, if it comes to that, I suppose you’re right.

Philalethes.  And if by chance, after those ten thousand years have gone by, no one ever thinks of awakening you, I fancy it would be no great misfortune.  You would have become quite accustomed to non-existence after so long a spell of it—­following upon such a very few years of life.  At any rate you may be sure you would be perfectly ignorant of the whole thing.  Further, if you knew that the mysterious power which keeps you in your present state of life had never once ceased in those ten thousand years to bring forth other phenomena like yourself, and to endow them with life, it would fully console you.

Thrasymachos.  Indeed!  So you think you’re quietly going to do me out of my individuality with all this fine talk.  But I’m up to your tricks.  I tell you I won’t exist unless I can have my individuality.  I’m not going to be put off with ‘mysterious powers,’ and what you call ‘phenomena.’  I can’t do without my individuality, and I won’t give it up.