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:  but, if he reflects, he can break the fetters and set himself free.  It is only indirectly, I say, that the individual has this violent craving for existence.  It is the Will to Live which is the real and direct aspirant—­alike and identical in all things.  Since, then, existence is the free work, nay, the mere reflection of the will, where existence is, there, too, must be will; and for the moment the will finds its satisfaction in existence itself; so far, I mean, as that which never rests, but presses forward eternally, can ever find any satisfaction at all.  The will is careless of the individual:  the individual is not its business; although, as I have said, this seems to be the case, because the individual has no direct consciousness of will except in himself.  The effect of this is to make the individual careful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, there would be no surety for the preservation of the species.  From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of perfection, but rather of limitation; and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain.  Trouble yourself no more about the matter.  Once thoroughly recognize what you are, what your existence really is, namely, the universal will to live, and the whole question will seem to you childish, and most ridiculous!