both a beginning and an end.  Your being in itself, on the contrary, knows neither time, nor beginning, nor end, nor the limits of a given individuality; hence no individuality can be without it, but it is there in each and all.  So that, in the first sense, after death you become nothing; in the second, you are and remain everything.  That is why I said that after death you would be all and nothing.  It is difficult to give you a more exact answer to your question than this and to be brief at the same time; but here we have undoubtedly another contradiction; this is because your life is in time and your immortality in eternity.  Hence your immortality may be said to be something that is indestructible and yet has no endurance—­which is again contradictory, you see.  This is what happens when transcendental knowledge is brought within the boundary of immanent knowledge; in doing this some sort of violence is done to the latter, since it is used for things for which it was not intended.

Thras. Listen; without I retain my individuality I shall not give a sou for your immortality.

Phil. Perhaps you will allow me to explain further.  Suppose I guarantee that you will retain your individuality, on condition, however, that you spend three months in absolute unconsciousness before you awaken.

Thras. I consent to that.

Phil. Well then, as we have no idea of time when in a perfectly unconscious state, it is all the same to us when we are dead whether three months or ten thousand years pass away in the world of consciousness.  For in the one case, as in the other, we must accept on faith and trust what we are told when we awake.  Accordingly it will be all the same to you whether your individuality is restored to you after the lapse of three months or ten thousand years.

Thras. At bottom, that cannot very well be denied.

Phil. But if, at the end of those ten thousand years, some one has quite forgotten to waken you, I imagine that you would have become accustomed to that long state of non-existence, following such a very short existence, and that the misfortune would not be very great.  However, it is quite certain that you would know nothing about it.  And again, it would fully console you to know that the mysterious power which gives life to your present phenomenon had never ceased for one moment during the ten thousand years to produce other phenomena of a like nature and to give them life.

Thras. Indeed!  And so it is in this way that you fancy you can quietly, and without my knowing, cheat me of my individuality?  But you cannot cozen me in this way.  I have stipulated for the retaining of my individuality, and neither mysterious forces nor phenomena can console me for the loss of it.  It is dear to me, and I shall not let it go.

Phil. That is to say, you regard your individuality as something so very delightful, excellent, perfect, and incomparable that there is nothing better than it; would you not exchange it for another, according to what is told us, that is better and more lasting?