VII. The Questions of Life and the Riddle of Death I

Galilei had a friend who was a follower of Aristotle and who had discerned something incorrectly from Aristotle that the nerves take the heart as starting point. He led him to a corpse and showed that the nerves take the brain as starting point. The friend said, yes, it seems so, but I read with Aristotle that it is different, and I believe him more.—Today people come and say, it sounds reasonable, but with Haeckel we read it different. Here Schopenhauer's sentence counts: truth always had to suffer from the fact that she appears paradoxical if she enters into existence, because she cannot sit down on the throne of the widespread error. Thus she looks up at her guardian angel, the time, whose wing beats are, however, so slow, that someone who has recognised the truth often dies in the meantime.