BY MARGRIETA BEER, M.A. LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK 67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGH NEW YORK: DODGE PUBLISHING CO. CONTENTS CHAP. INTRODUCTION I. SCHOPENHAUER'S LIFE II. PESSIMISM III. ART IV. VIRTUE BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX...

Schopenhauer differs from most other philosophers in that he has influenced not only the development of the history of thought, the course along which modern philosophy has proceeded, but in that his views have been welcomed as an inspiration, accepted almost in the spirit of a religious faith by workers in quite other departments of life. No philosopher has so directly touched and influenced the great art movements of modern times. It is now nearly one hundred years since the publication of his

SCHOPENHAUER'S LIFE Arthur Schopenhauer led the outwardly uneventful life of a scholar and a thinker, taking no part in public affairs. The great movements in European history, through which he lived, left him untroubled and unmoved in his scholar's seclusion. There is little therefore to chronicle with regard to the outer history of his life. It is the more easy to escape the criticism of Schopenhauer himself, who says that "those who, instead of studying the thoughts of a philosopher, make the

PESSIMISM Schopenhauer's system is set forth in all its fulness in his great work, The World as Will and Idea . All that he wrote after the appearance of this book was confirmation and expansion of the theories already laid down. It differs from his earlier books in method. He no longer follows academic lines. He looks upon the work as a revelation of the meaning of life, based on a clear and direct intuition into life, and the style shapes itself accordingly. Metaphor frequently takes the place

ART Schopenhauer's theory of the beautiful is the side of his philosophy which has always made so potent an appeal to artists, and to all those lovers of the beautiful, for whom art represents the supreme significance of life. The present for Schopenhauer is only an infinitesimal moment between two eternities, the past and the future. It is "a flash of light between two darknesses." Now how is man to make the best of this brief moment, under the hard conditions of his destiny? The answer to this

VIRTUE Art, which Schopenhauer calls "the flower of life," enables us to forget the cares and sufferings of life. The consolation which we derive from beauty repays us for the miseries and terrors of existence. The contemplation of beauty brings us deliverance from the deceptions and illusions of life, and gives us a pure, true, and deep knowledge of the inner nature of the world. It acts as a quieter of the will, and such quiet contemplation of beauty is the nearest approach to pure satisfactio

A. ENGLISH The World as Will and Idea . Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp. 3 vols. 1883-6. London: The English and Foreign Philosophical Library. Two Essays. I. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. II. On the Will in Nature . Bonn's Philosophical Library. 1889. Selected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer . Translated by E. Belfort Bax. London: Bohn. Religion: A Dialogue; and other Essays . Translated by T. Bailey Saunders. 1891. London: Swan Sonnenschein. Pp. 140. The Wis