272 FOURTH BOOK. CHAPTER XLI.
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(Stulta, et prolixas non admittentia curas Pectora: gui srperant, existere posse, quod ante Non fuit, aut ullam rem pessum protinus ire; – Non animo prudens homo quod præsentiat ullus, Dum vivunt (namque hoc vitaï nomine signant), Sunt, et fortuna tum conflictantur utraque: Ante ortum nihil est homo, nec post funera quidquam.)
The very remarkable and, in its place, astonishing passage in Diderot's "Jacques le fataliste," deserves not less to be mentioned here: "Un château immense, au frontispice duquel on lisait: 'Je n'appartiens à personne, et j'appartiens à tout le monde: vous y étiez avant que d'y entrer, vous y serez encore, quand vous en sortirez."
Certainly in the- sense in which, when he is begotten, the man arises out of nothing, he becomes nothing through death. But really to learn to know this "nothing" would be very interesting; for it only requires moderate acuteness to see that this empirical nothing is by no means absolute, i.e., such as would in every sense be nothing. We are already led to this insight by the observation that all qualities of the parents recur in the children, thus have overcome death. Of this, however, I will speak in a special chapter.
There is no greater contrast than that between the ceaseless flight of time, which carries its whole content with it, and the rigid immobility of what is actually present, which at all times is one and the same. And if from this point of view we watch in a purely objective manner the immediate events of life, the Nunc stans becomes clear
