tragedy—­the Idea of humanity, stands higher than the plastic arts.  The highest rank, however, belongs to music, since it does not, like the other arts, represent single Ideas, but—­as an unconscious metaphysic, nay, a second, ideal world above the material world—­the will itself.  In view of this high appreciation of their art, it is not surprising that musicians have contributed a considerable contingent to the band of Schopenhauer worshipers.  A different source of attraction for the wider circle of readers was supplied by the piquant spice of pessimism.

If the purposiveness of the phenomena of nature points to the unity of the primal will, the unspeakable misery of life, which Schopenhauer sets forth with no less of eloquence, proves the blindness and irrationality of the world-ground.  To live is to suffer; the world contains incomparably more pain than pleasure; it is the worst possible world.  In the world of sub-animal nature aimless striving; in the animal world an insatiable impulse after enjoyment—­while the will, deceiving itself with fancied happiness to come, which always remains denied it, and continually tossed to and fro between necessity and ennui, never attains complete satisfaction.  The pleasure which it pursues is nothing but the removal of a dissatisfaction, and vanishes at once when the longing is stilled, to be replaced by fresh wants, that is, by new pains.  In view of the indescribable misery in the world, to favor optimism is evidence not so much of folly and blindness as of a wanton disposition.  The old saying is true:  Non-existence is better than existence.  The misery, however, is the just punishment for the original sin of the individual, which gave itself its particular existence by an act of intelligible freedom.  Redemption from the sin and misery of existence is possible only through a second act of transcendental freedom, which, since it consists in the complete transformation of our being, and since it is supernatural in its origin, the Church is right in describing as a new birth and work of grace.

Morality presupposes pessimistic insight into the badness of the world and the fruitlessness of all desire, and pantheistic discernment of the untruth of individual existence and the identity in essence of all individuals from a metaphysical standpoint.  Man is able to free himself from egoistic self-affirmation only when he perceives the two truths, that all striving is vain and the longed-for pleasure unattainable, and that all individuals are at bottom one, viz. manifestations of the same primal will.  This is temporarily effected in sympathy, which, as the only counterpoise to natural selfishness, is the true moral motive and the source of all love and justice.  The sympathizer sees himself in others and feels their suffering as his own.  The entire negation of the will, however, inspiring examples of which have been furnished by the Christian ascetics and Oriental penitents,