anent knowledge, on the
other hand, is knowledge which confines itself entirely with those
bounds; so that it cannot apply to anything but actual phenomena. As
far as you are an individual, death will be the end of you. But your
individuality is not your true and inmost being: it is only the
outward manifestation of 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 t