 Arguing thus, Feuerbach urged his readers to acknowledge and accept the irreversibility of their individual mortality so that in doing so they might come to an awareness of the immortality of their species-essence, and thus to knowledge of their true self, which is not the individual person with whom they were accustomed to identify themselves. They would then be in a position to recognize that, while “the shell of death is hard, its kernel is sweet” (GTU 205/20), and that the true belief in immortality is 