hereafter, if not here; and even in
this world they have the better lot in the long run. But of this nothing
is comparable to their rewards in the hereafter, revealed to us in the
mythos of Er, called the Armenian, whose body being slain in battle, his
soul was said to have returned to it from the under-world--renewing its
life--a messenger to men of what he had there beheld. For a thousand
years the souls, being judged, enjoyed or suffered a tenfold retribution
for all they had done of good or evil in this life, and some for a
second term, or it might be for terms without end. Then for the most
part they were given again, after the thousand years, a choice of
another lot on the earth, being guided therein by their experience in
their last life; and so, having drunk of the waters of forgetfulness,
came back to earth once more, unconscious of their past.

Let us, then, believing that the soul is indeed immortal, hold fast to
knowledge and justice, that it may be well with us both here and
hereafter.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

The World as Will and Idea

Arthur Schopenhauer, who was born at Dantzig, in Germany, Feb. 22,
1788, and died September 21, 1860, came of highly intellectual
antecedents, his mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, being a noted German
authoress. As an indefatigable student he migrated, according to
the fashion of his Fatherland, from one university to another, in
order to sit at the feet of various professors, and thus he
attended courses at Gottingen, Berlin, and Jena successively,
finally graduating at Jena in 1813. The winter of that year he
spent at Weimar, revelling in the society of Goethe, and also
enjoying intercourse with Maier, the profound Orientalist, who
indoctrinated him with those views of Indian mysticism which
greatly influenced his future philosophic disquisitions. After
writing and publishing a few slight treatises Schopenhauer sent
forth his great work, "The World as Will and Idea," which has
immortalized him. It appeared in 1819. During subsequent years,
when he resided in Frankfort, he wrote his volumes on "Will in
Nature," "The Freedom of the Will," "The Basis of Morals," and
"Parerga and Paralipomena." The keynote of Schopenhauer's
philosophy is that the sole essential reality in the universe is
the will, and that all visible and tangible phenomena are merely
subjective repre