is to one who plays a
part--assumes a role. The naked truth is not pleasant to look upon, and
that is the reason it is so seldom put upon parade.

The man Schopenhauer would be intolerable, but the writer Schopenhauer
is gaining ground in inverse ratio to the square of the distance we are
from him. "Where shall we bury you?" a friend asked him a few days
before his death.

"Oh, anywhere--posterity will find me!" was the answer. And so on the
modest stone that marks his resting-place at Frankfort, are engraved the
two words, ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, and nothing more. The world will not
soon forget the pessimist who had such undying optimism--such
unquenchable faith--that he knew the world would make a path to his
tomb.

Schopenhauer was the only prominent writer that ever lived who
persistently affirmed that life is an evil--existence a curse. Yet every
man who has ever lived has at times thought so; but to proclaim the
thought--or even entertain it long--would stagger sanity, befog the
intellect and make mind lose its way.

And yet we prize Schopenhauer the more for having said the thing that we
secretly thought; in some subtle way we get a satisfaction out of his
statement, and at the same time, we perceive the man was wrong.

The man who can vivisect an emotion, and lay bare a heart-beat in print,
knows a subtle joy. The misery that can explain itself is not all
misery. Complete misery is dumb; and pain that is all pain is quickly
transformed into insensibility. Schopenhauer's life was quite as happy
as that of many men who persistently depress us by requesting us to
"cheer up." Schopenhauer says, "Don't try to cheer up--the worst is yet
to come." And we can not refrain a smile. A mother once called to her
little boy to come into the house. And the boy answered, "I won't do
it!" And the mother replied, "Stay out then!" And very soon the child
came in.

Truth is only a point of view, and when a man tells us what he sees, we
swiftly take into consideration who and what the man is. Everybody does
this, unconsciously. It depends upon who says it! The garrulous man who
habitually overstates--painting things large--does not deceive anybody,
and is quite as good a companion as the painstaking, exact man who is
always setting us straight on our statistics. One man we take gross and
the other net. The liar gross is all right, but the liar net is very
bad.

Schopenhauer was a talkative, whimsical and sensitive personality,