truth is contained in that fine French proverb: _le mieux est l'ennemi
du bien_--leave well alone. And, as I have remarked in my chief
work,[1] this is the leading thought underlying the philosophical
system of the Cynics. For what was it led the Cynics to repudiate
pleasure in every form, if it was not the fact that pain is, in a
greater or less degree, always bound up with pleasure? To go out of
the way of pain seemed to them so much easier than to secure pleasure.
Deeply impressed as they were by the negative nature of pleasure and
the positive nature of pain, they consistently devoted all their
efforts to the avoidance of pain. The first step to that end was, in
their opinion, a complete and deliberate repudiation of pleasure, as
something which served only to entrap the victim in order that he
might be delivered over to pain.

[Footnote 1: _Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol. ii., ch. 16.]

We are all born, as Schiller says, in Arcadia. In other words, we
come into the world full of claims to happiness and pleasure, and we
cherish the fond hope of making them good. But, as a rule, Fate soon
teaches us, in a rough and ready way that we really possess nothing at
all, but that everything in the world is at its command, in virtue of
an unassailable right, not only to all we have or acquire, to wife or
child, but even to our very limbs, our arms, legs, _eyes_ and ears,
nay, even to the nose in the middle of our face. And in any case,
after some little time, we learn by experience that happiness and
pleasure are a _fata morgana_, which, visible from afar, vanish as we
approach; that, on the other hand, suffering and pain are a reality,
which makes its presence felt without any intermediary, and for its
effect, stands in no need of illusion or the play of false hope.