anywhere else." Schopenhauer was so well read in European literature,
he had such natural alertness of mind, and his style is so pointed,
direct, and wide-awake, that these detached discussions are
interesting and most readable; but for the most part discussions they
are, and not aphorisms. Thus, in the saying that "The perfect man of
the world should be he who never sticks fast in indecision, nor ever
falls into overhaste," the force of it lies in what goes before and
what follows after. The whole collection, winding up with the chapter
of Counsels and Maxims, is in the main an unsystematic enforcement of
those peculiar views of human happiness and its narrow limits which
proved to be the most important part of Schopenhauer's system. "The
sovereign rule in the wisdom of life," he said, "I see in Aristotle's
proposition (_Eth. Nic_. vii. 12), [Greek: ho phronimos to alupon
diokei, ou to haedu]: Not pleasure but freedom from pain is what
the sensible man goes after." The second volume, of Detached though
systematically Ordered Thoughts on Various Circumstances, is
miscellaneous in its range of topics, and is full of suggestion; but
the thoughts are mainly philosophical and literary, and do not come
very close to practical wisdom. In truth, so negative a view of
happiness, such pale hopes and middling expectations, could not guide
a man far on the path of active prudence, where we naturally take for
granted that the goal is really something substantial, serious, solid,
and positive.[1]

[Footnote 1: Burke says on the point raised above: "I am satisfied the
ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the
part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the torments which we may be made
to suffer are much greater in their effect on the body and mind, than
any pleasures which the most learned voluptuary could suggest. Nay,
I am in great doubt whether any man could be found, who would earn a