And corresponding to this, we find in the conversation of most men that their thoughts are cut up as small as chaff, making it impossible for them to spin out the thread of their discourse to any length.  If this world were peopled by really thinking beings, noise of every kind would not be so universally tolerated, as indeed the most horrible and aimless form of it is.[12] If Nature had intended man to think she would not have given him ears, or, at any rate, she would have furnished them with air-tight flaps like the bat, which for this reason is to be envied.  But, in truth, man is like the rest, a poor animal, whose powers are calculated only to maintain him during his existence; therefore he requires to have his ears always open to announce of themselves, by night as by day, the approach of the pursuer.

FOOTNOTES: 

[12] See Essay on Noise, p. 28.

SHORT DIALOGUE ON

THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR TRUE BEING BY DEATH.

Thrasymachos. Tell me briefly, what shall I be after my death?  Be clear and precise.

Philalethes. Everything and nothing.

Thras. That is what I expected.  You solve the problem by a contradiction.  That trick is played out.

Phil. To answer transcendental questions in language that is made for immanent knowledge must assuredly lead to a contradiction.

Thras. What do you call transcendental knowledge, and what immanent?  It is true these expressions are known to me, for my professor used them, but only as predicates of God, and as his philosophy had exclusively to do with God, their use was quite appropriate.  For instance, if God was in the world, He was immanent; if He was somewhere outside it, He was transcendent.  That is clear and comprehensible.  One knows how things stand.  But your old-fashioned Kantian doctrine is no longer understood.  There has been quite a succession of great men in the metropolis of German learning——­

Phil. (aside). German philosophical nonsense!

Thras.——­such as the eminent Schleiermacher and that gigantic mind Hegel; and to-day we have left all that sort of thing behind, or rather we are so far ahead of it that it is out of date and known no more.  Therefore, what good is it?

Phil. Transcendental knowledge is that which, going beyond the boundary of possible experience, endeavours to determine the nature of things as they are in themselves; while immanent knowledge keeps itself within the boundary of possible experience, therefore it can only apply to phenomena.  As an individual, with your death there will be an end of you.  But your individuality is not your true and final being, indeed it is rather the mere expression of it; it is not the thing-in-itself but only the phenomenon presented in the form of time, and accordingly has