The will to persist in being, the conatus essendi or indeed the very selfishness of the selfish gene, cannot be a fundamental principle in a materialist-mathematical ontology. It needs at best to be derived as some kind of emergent property of complex systems leaning heavily on the laws of entropy. But emergent properties are only forms of interpretation dependent on their interpreter which in this case is itself a product of exactly the same system. This circularity is a flimsy basis from which to further derive the principle of individuation arising as it does out of the conflict and competition of distinguished wills. A more satisfactory solution is surely to see distinction as arising out of fundamental will than the other way around, than for will to have emerged out of fundamental distinction. In the same way it is a lot easier to see how the idea of a materialist-mathematical ontology is a defensive formation of will than to attempt the opposite derivation. The problem is that will doesn't seem to be fundamental enough, it has to depend on something else again, to have arisen as a twist or swerve in some dark and energetic and yet supremely tranquil ground, neither present nor absent, free of all location.