Note 199 — Chapter III · THE PLACE OF THE “SELF” IN REALITY

I ought perhaps to say a word—more I do not think necessary—upon the doctrine that immortality is a fundamental “moral postulate.” If this statement means no more than that it would be inconsistent with the rationality of the universe that our work as moral agents should be simply wasted, and that therefore it must somehow have its accomplishment whether we see it in our human society or not, I should certainly agree with the general proposition. But I cannot see that we know enough of the structure of the universe to assert that this accomplishment is only possible in the special form of immortality. To revert to the illustration of the text, (1) our judgment that the world must be a worthless place without immortality might be on a level with the child’s notion that “grown-up” life, to be worth having, must be a life of continual play and no work. (2) If it is meant, however, that it is not “worth while” to be virtuous unless you can look forward to remuneration—what Hegel, according to Heine, called a Trinkgeld—hereafter for not having lived like a beast, the proposition appears to me a piece of immoral nonsense which it would be waste of time to discuss.