The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer | Page 2

in our good days we are all unconscious of the evil Fate may have
presently in store for us--sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or
reason.
No little part of the torment of existence lies in this, that Time is
continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath, but always
coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip. If at any moment Time
stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the misery of
boredom.
But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst
asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed, so, if the lives
of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything
they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with
arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the
spectacle of unbridled folly--nay, they would go mad. And I may say,
further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for
every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not
go straight.
Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form the lot of almost
all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as

they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do
with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land
flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once
and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang
themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in
the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now
to accept at the hands of Nature.
In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children
in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and
eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not
know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are
times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned,
not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their
sentence means. Nevertheless, every man desires to reach old age; in
other words, a state of life of which it may be said: "It is bad to-day,
and it will be worse to-morrow; and so on till the worst of all."
If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery,
pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you
will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the
moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here
as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state.
Again, you may look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing
the blessed calm of non-existence. And, in any case, even though things
have gone with you tolerably well, the longer you live the more clearly
you will feel that, on the whole, life is a disappointment, nay, a cheat.
If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are
old, after being separated for a life-time, the chief feeling they will
have at the sight of each other will be one of complete disappointment
at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be carried back to that
earlier time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before them in
the rosy light of dawn, promised so much--and then performed so little.
This feeling will so completely predominate over every other that they
will not even consider it necessary to give it words; but on either side it
will be silently assumed, and form the ground-work of all they have to

talk about.
He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits
some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the
performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be
seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to
deceive, their effect is gone.
While no man is much to be envied for his lot, there are countless
numbers whose fate is to be deplored.
Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say defunctus est; it means
that the man has done his task.
If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone,
would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have
so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden
of