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THE HOLY TRINITY.
573 cation are retained. It is that which feels. Now, feelings are quite independent of reason and spring from will, appearing as life in an organism. Schopenhauer recognized this when he said :
“The complete difference between the mental and moral qualities displays itself lastly in the fact that the intellect suffers very important changes through time, while the will and character remain untouched by it... The advance of age, which gradually consumes the intellectual powers, leaves the moral qualities untouched. The goodness of the heart still makes the old man honoured and loved when his head already shows the weaknesses which are the commencement of second childhood. Gentleness, patience, honesty, veracity, disinterestedness, philanthropy, etc., remain throngh the whole life, and are not lost through the weaknesses of old age; in every clear moment of the worn-out old man they come forth undiminished, like the sun from the winter clouds. And, on the other hand, malice, spite, avarice, hard-heartedness, infidelity, egoism, and baseness of every kind also remain undiminished to our latest years... The only alterations that take place in our inclinations are those which result directly from the decrease of our physical strength, and with it of our capacities for enjoyment. Thus voluptuousness will make way for intemperance, the love of splendour for avarice, and vanity for ambition; just like the man who before he has a beard will wear a false one, and later, when his own beard has become grey, will dye it brown. Thus, while all organic forces, muscular power, the senses, the memory, wit, understanding, genius, wear themselves out, and in old age become dull, the will alone remains undecayed and unaltered; the strength and the tendency of willing remains the same. Indeed, in many points the will shows itself still more decided in age : thus, in the clinging to life, which, it is well-known, increases; also in the firmness and persistency with regard to what it has once embraced, in obstinacy; which is explicable from the fact that the susceptibility of the intellect for other impressions, and thereby the movement of the will by motives streaming in upon it, has diminished..........Great age, illness, injury of the brain, madness, may deprive us of memory altogether, but the identity of the person is not thereby lost. It l'ests upon the identical will and the unalterable character of the
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