Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/12

viii him lose sight of the main thread. The English author, on the contrary, anxious before all things to avoid confusion and misunderstanding, and ready for this end not only to sacrifice harmony of proportion in construction, but to submit to the necessity of occasional artificial join- ing, usually adopts the analytical method. He prefers to divide the thread of his discourse into several smaller skeins, easier certainly to handle and thus better suiting the convenience of the English thinker, to whom long periods are trying and bewildering, and who is not always willing to wait half a page or more for the point of a sentence or the gist of a thought. Wherever it could be done without interfering seriously with the spirit of the original, I have broken up the longer periods in these essays into smaller sentences, in order to facilitate their compre- hension. At times however Schopenhauer recapitulates a whole side of his view of the Universe in a single period of what seems intolerable length to the English reader: as, for instance, the résumé contained in the Introduction to his "Will in Nature," which could not be divided without damage to his meaning. Here therefore it did not seem advisable to sacrifice the unity and harmony of his design and to disturb both his form and his meaning, in order to minister to the reader's dislike for mental exertion ; in keeping the period intact I have however endeavoured to make it as easy to comprehend as possible by the way in which the single parts are presented to the eye.

As regards the terms chosen to convey the German meaning, I can hardly hope to have succeeded in every case in adequately rendering it, still less can I expect to have satisfied my English readers. Several words of fre quent occurrence and of considerable importance for the right understanding of the original, have been used at