hinks 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.

_Philalethes_. You mean, I suppose, that your individuality is such a
delightful thing, so splendid, so perfect, and beyond compare--that
you can't imagine anything better. Aren't you ready to exchange your
present state for one which, if we can judge by what is told us, may
possibly be superior and more endurable?

_Thrasymachos_. Don't you see that my individuality, be it what it
may, is my very self? To me it is the most important thing in the
world.

_For God is God and I am I_.

_I_ want to exist, _I, I_. That's the main thing. I don't care about
an existence which has to be proved to be mine, before I can believe
it.

_Philalethes_. Think what you're doing! When you say _I, I, I_ want
to exist, it is not you alone that says this. Everything says it,
absolutely everything that has the faintest trace of consciousness. It
follows, then, that this desire of yours is just the part of you that
is _not individual_--the part that is common to all things without
distinction. It is the cry, not of the individual, but of existence
itself; it is the intrinsic element in everything that exists, nay, it
is the cause of anything existing at all. This desire craves for, and
so is satisfied with, nothing less than existence in general--not any
definite individual existence. No! that is not its aim. It seems to be
so only because this desire--this _Will_--attains consciousness only
in the individual, and therefore looks as though it were concerned
with nothing but the individual. There lies the illusion--an illusion,
it is true, in which the individual is held fast