BY EDGAR EVERTSON SALTUS In Arkadien geboren sind wir Alle Schiller BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street, The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1887 Copyright, 1885, By EDGAR EVERTSON SALTUS. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge: Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co....

The trite and commonplace question of contentment and dissatisfaction is a topic which is not only of every-day interest, but one which in recent years has so claimed the attention of thinkers, that they have broadly divided mankind into those who accept life off-hand, as a more or less pleasing possession, and those who resolutely look the gift in the mouth and say it is not worth the having. Viewed simply as systems of thought, the first of these two divisions is evidently contemporaneous with

It was with something of the lassitude which succeeds an orgy that Schopenhauer turned from the riot of the will and undertook to examine such possibilities of happiness as life may yet afford, and, as incidental thereto, the manner in which such possibilities may be most enjoyed. To this subject he brought a sumptuous variety of reflections, which are summed up in a multi-colored essay, entitled "Lebensweisheit," or Conduct of Life, but in which, in spite of the luxury of detail and brilliancy

It is related of Schopenhauer that he was in the habit of putting down a gold piece on the table d'hôte where he dined, and of taking it up again when the dinner was ended. This gold piece, he explained to his Boswell, was for the waiter the first time that any one of the different officers, who frequented the dining-room, was heard discussing a loftier topic than that which is circled in wine, woman, and song. As the story runs, no occasion ever presented itself in which he could in this manner

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