[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), a
popular poet, and friend of Klopstock, Herder and Leasing. He edited
the _Wandsbecker Bote_, in the fourth part of which appeared the
treatise mentioned above. He generally wrote under the pseudonym of
_Asmus_, and Schopenhauer often refers to him by this name.]

Between the ethics of the Greeks and the ethics of the Hindoos, there
is a glaring contrast. In the one case (with the exception, it must be
confessed, of Plato), the object of ethics is to enable a man to lead
a happy life; in the other, it is to free and redeem him from life
altogether--as is directly stated in the very first words of the
_Sankhya Karika_.

Allied with this is the contrast between the Greek and the Christian
idea of death. It is strikingly presented in a visible form on a fine
antique sarcophagus in the gallery of Florence, which exhibits, in
relief, the whole series of ceremonies attending a wedding in ancient
times, from the formal offer to the evening when Hymen's torch lights
the happy couple home. Compare with that the Christian coffin,
draped in mournful black and surmounted with a crucifix! How much
significance there is in these two ways of finding comfort in death.
They are opposed to each other, but each is right. The one points to
the _affirmation_ of the will to live, which remains sure of life for
all time, however rapidly its forms may change. The other, in the
symbol of suffering and death, points to the _denial_ of the will to
live, to redemption from this world, the domain of death and devil.
And in the question between the affirmation and the denial of the will
to live, Christianity is in the last resort right.

The contrast which the New Testament presents when compared with the