SOURCE: "Translator's Preface," in The Wisdom of Life, Being the First Part of Arthur Schopenhauer's Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, by Arthur Schopenhauer, translated by T. Bailey Saunders, S. Sonnenschein & Co., 1890, pp. v-xxvi.

In the following essay, Saunders comments on Schopenhauer's pessimism.

Of Schopenhauer—as of many another writer—it may be said that he has been misunderstood and depreciated just in the degree in which he is thought to be new; and that, in treating of the Conduct of Life, he is, in reality, valuable only in so far as he brings old truths to remembrance. His name used to arouse, and in certain quarters still arouses, a vague sense of alarm; as though he had come to subvert all the rules of right thinking and all the principles of good conduct, rather than to proclaim once again and give a new meaning to truths with which the world...