H.[1]
Schopenhauer writes in 1818, in the introduction to his principal work:
To my idea, the greatest advantage which this century, still in its infancy, has over the preceding one, is that the knowledge of the Vedas has been imparted to it, through the translation of the Upanishads. Indeed, I might almost presume to affirm that the influence of Sanskrit literature in Europe will equal that caused by the revival of Greek Letters, which took place in the fourteenth century.
As long as the “negation of will” has not taken place, that part of our being which death leaves intact is the root and cause of another existence, in which a new personality finds itself again, so fresh and so new, that it considers itself with wonder.
That which sleep is to every human being, death is to the will, which is das Ding an sich—the cause in itself.
Man could not bear to continue for ever the same busy life, its misery and pain, without any real gain to be gotten by it, if he retained throughout it his personality and memory. At death he abandons them both, and taking this draught of Lethe returns refreshed through that sleep of death, to take his place in life, gifted with another intellect, a new personality.
Death is, and remains for us, something negative—the ending of life. But it must also have a positive side, which, however, is hidden to our sight because our intellect is totally impotent to grasp it.
Thus do we understand what we lose through death, but not that which we gain through it.
In his Parerga and Paralipomena Schopenhauer writes:
If we thoroughly understood the real nature of our innermost Being, we should see how absurd it is to desire that the Individual, as such, should exist for ever. To wish for this means giving up Being itself for one of its innumerable manifestations.
No individuality is fitted for an eternal duration. It disappears in death; but we lose nothing by this, for this individuality is only the manifestation of an entirely different being—a being that knows nothing of time, and therefore nothing either of life or death.
The loss of the intellect, which the will sustains at death (the will being the cause of the individual manifestation which has ceased to be), is the Lethe without which it would remember the different apparitions of which it has already been the cause.
When we die we ought to throw off our individuality like a worn-out garment, and rejoice over the new and better one which we are about to receive, after having learnt a new lesson.
This world is hell, and the men in it are, some of them, tormented souls, others demons.
Asceticism is, in reality, the soul of the New Testament, and what is asceticism if not the negation of the will to live.
My ethic shows theoretically the metaphysical reason for justice and love of humanity, and shows also to what end these feelings, being perfected, must bring you. At the same time, it points to the negation of the will (to live) as the only way of salvation from the wickedness of the world. It is, therefore, according to the spirit of the New Testament; while other ethics are written in the spirit of the Old Testament, and all end in a despotic theism. My teaching could be called the Christian Philosophy, however paradoxical this may seem to those who only judge things superficially.
Whoever, through meditation (on this subject), has persuaded himself how necessary for our salvation trouble and pain generally are, will readily admit that we ought not to envy others their happiness, but their misfortunes.
H.
Note
[1] The Theosophy of Schopenhauer. H. [Franz Hartmann, M.D.] Lucifer 12, no. 72 (August 1893), 599-600. {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}