Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/10

vi no more competent scholar has come forward to do the work, it may not seem presumptuous to suppose that this version may be acceptable to those who wish to acquire a more than superficial knowledge of this remarkable thinker, yet whose acquaintance with German does not permit them to read his works in the original.

Now although some portions of both the Essays published in the present volume have of course become antiquated, owing to the subsequent development of the empirical sciences, while others such as, for instance, Schopenhauer's denunciation of plagiarism in the cases of Brandis and Rosas in the beginning of Physiology and Pathology can have no interest for the reader of the present day, I have nevertheless given them just as he left them and refrained from all suppression or alteration. And if, on the whole, the "Will in Nature" may be less indispensable for a right understanding of our philosopher's views than the "Fourfold Root," being merely a record of the confirmations which had been contributed during his lifetime by the various branches of Natural Science to his doctrine, that the thing in itself is the will, the Second Essay has nevertheless in its own way quite as much importance as the First, and is, in a sense, its complement. For they both throw light on Schopenhauer's view of the Universe in its double aspect as Will and as Representation, each being as it were a résumé of the exposition of one of those aspects. My plea for uniting them in one volume, in spite of the difference of their contents and the wide lapse of time (seventeen years) which lies between them, must be, that they complete each other, and that their great weight and intrinsic value seem to point them out as peculiarly fitted to be introduced to the English thinker.

In endeavouring to convey the Author's thoughts as he