Second:  That his real nature is more closely allied to the species than to the individual.  For this interest that he takes in the special nature of the species, which is the source of all love, from the most fleeting emotion to the most serious passion, is in reality the most important affair in each man’s life, the successful or unsuccessful issue of which touches him more nearly than anything else.  This is why it has been pre-eminently called the “affair of the heart.”  Everything that merely concerns one’s own person is set aside and sacrificed, if the case require it, to this interest when it is of a strong and decided nature.  Therefore in this way man proves that he is more interested in the species than in the individual, and that he lives more directly in the interest of the species than in that of the individual.

Why, then, is a lover so absolutely devoted to every look and turn of his beloved, and ready to make any kind of sacrifice for her?  Because the immortal part of him is yearning for her; it is only the mortal part of him that longs for everything else.  That keen and even intense longing for a particular woman is accordingly a direct pledge of the immortality of the essence of our being and of its perpetuity in the species.

To regard this perpetuity as something unimportant and insufficient is an error, arising from the fact that in thinking of the continuity of the species we only think of the future existence of beings similar to ourselves, but in no respect, however, identical with us; and again, starting from knowledge directed towards without, we only grasp the outer form of the species as it presents itself to us, and do not take into consideration its inner nature.  It is precisely this inner nature that lies at the foundation of our own consciousness as its kernel, and therefore is more direct than our consciousness itself, and as thing-in-itself exempt from the principium individuationis—­is in reality identical and the same in all individuals, whether they exist at the same or at different times.

This, then, is the will to live—­that is to say, it is exactly that which so intensely desires both life and continuance, and which accordingly remains unharmed and unaffected by death.  Further, its present state cannot be improved, and while there is life it is certain of the unceasing sufferings and death of the individual.  The denial of the will to live is reserved to free it from this, as the means by which the individual will breaks away from the stem of the species, and surrenders that existence in it.

We are wanting both in ideas and all data as to what it is after that.  We can only indicate it as something which is free to be will to live or not to live.  Buddhism distinguishes the latter case by the word Nirvana.  It is the point which as such remains for ever impenetrable to all human knowledge.