vocal, tortured, fleeting, dream-like existence
of ours--so vast and so close that a man no sooner discovers it than
it overshadows and obscures all other problems and aims; and when
one sees how all men, with few and rare exceptions, have no clear
consciousness of the problem, nay, seem to be quite unaware of its
presence, but busy themselves with everything rather than with this,
and live on, taking no thought but for the passing day and the hardly
longer span of their own personal future, either expressly discarding
the problem or else over-ready to come to terms with it by adopting
some system of popular metaphysics and letting it satisfy them; when,
I say, one takes all this to heart, one may come to the opinion that
man may be said to be _a thinking being_ only in a very remote
sense, and henceforth feel no special surprise at any trait of human
thoughtlessness or folly; but know, rather, that the normal man's
intellectual range of vision does indeed extend beyond that of the
brute, whose whole existence is, as it were, a continual present,
with no consciousness of the past or the future, but not such an
immeasurable distance as is generally supposed.

This is, in fact, corroborated by the way in which most men converse;
where their thoughts are found to be chopped up fine, like chaff, so
that for them to spin out a discourse of any length is impossible.

If this world were peopled by really thinking beings, it could not be
that noise of every kind would be allowed such generous limits, as is
the case with the most horrible and at the same time aimless form of
it.[1] If Nature had meant man to think, she would not have given him
ears; or, at any rate, she would have furnished them with airtight
flaps, such as are the enviable possession of the bat. But, in truth,
man is a poor animal like the rest, and his powers are meant only to
maintain him in the struggle for existence; so he must need keep his
ears always open, to announce of themselves, by night as by day, the
approach of the pursuer.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer refers to the cracking
of whips. See the Essay _On Noise_ in _Studies in Pessimism_.]

In the drama, which is the most perfect reflection of human existence,
there are three stages in the presentation of the subject, with a
corresponding variety in the design and scope of the piece.

At the first, which is also the most common, stage, the drama is
never anything more than me