When Schopenhauer was asked where he wished to be buried, he answered,
"Anywhere; they will find me;" and the stone that marks his grave at
Frankfort bears merely the inscription "Arthur Schopenhauer," without
even the date of his birth or death. Schopenhauer, the pessimist, had a
sufficiently optimistic conviction that his message to the world would
ultimately be listened to--a conviction that never failed him during a
lifetime of disappointments, of neglect in quarters where perhaps he
would have most cherished appreciation; a conviction that only showed
some signs of being justified a few years before his death. Schopenhauer
was no opportunist; he was not even conciliatory; he never hesitated to
declare his own faith in himself, in his principles, in his philosophy;
he did not ask to be listened to as a matter of courtesy but as a
right--a right for which he would struggle, for which he fought, and
which has in the course of time, it may be admitted, been conceded to
him.

Although everything that Schopenhauer wrote was written more or less as
evidence to support his main philosophical thesis, his unifying
philosophical principle, the essays in this volume have an interest, if
not altogether apart, at least of a sufficiently independent interest to
enable them to be considered on their own merits, without relation to
his main idea. And in dissociating them, if one may do so for a moment
(their author would have scarcely permitted it!), one feels that one
enters a field of criticism in which opinions can scarcely vary. So far
as his philosophy is concerned, this unanimity does not exist; he is one
of the best abused amongst philosophers; he has many times been
explained and condemned exhaustively, and no doubt this will be as many
times repeated. What the trend of his underlying philosophical principal