The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

was, however, supported by the confidence that anything true one may have thought, and anything obscure one may have thrown light upon, will appeal to any thinking mind, no matter when it comprehends it, and will rejoice and comfort it. To such an one we speak as those who are like us have spoken to us, and have so become our comfort in the wilderness of this life. Meanwhile the object is pursued on its own account and for its own sake.

Now it happens curiously enough with philosophical meditations, that precisely that which one has thought out and investigated for oneself, is afterwards of benefit to others ; not that, however, which was originally intended for others.

The former is confessedly nearest in character to perfect honesty ; for a man does not seek to deceive himself, nor does he offer himself empty husks; so that all sophistication and all mere talk is omitted, and consequently every sentence that is written at once repays the trouble of reading it.

Thus my writings bear the stamp of honesty and openness so distinctly on the face of them, that by this alone they are a glaring contrast to those of three celebrated sophists of the postKantian period.

I am always to be found at the standpoint of reflection, i.e., rational deliberation and honest statement, never at that of inspiration, called intellectual intuition, or absolute thought ; though, if it received its proper name, it would be called empty bombast and charlatanism.

Working then in this spirit, and always seeing the false and bad in universal acceptance, yea, bombast ^ and charlatanism * in the highest honour, I have long renounced the approbation of my contemporaries. It is impossible that an age which for twenty years has applauded a Hegel, that intellectual CaUhan, as the

^ Fichte and Schelling. ^ * HegeL xxii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, greatest of the philosophers, so loudly that it echoes through the whole of Europe, could make him who has looked on at that desirous of its approbation. It has no more crowns of honour to bestow ; its applause is prostituted, and its censure has no significance. That I mean what 1 say is attested by the fact that if I had in any way sought the approbation of my contemporaries, I would have had to strike out a score of passages which entirely contradict all their opinions, and indeed must in part be offensive to them. But I would count it a crime to sacrifice a single syllable to that approbation. My guiding star has, in all seriousness, been truth. Following it, I could first a.spire only to my own approbation, entirely averted from an age deeply degraded as regards all higher intellectual efforts, and a national literature demoralised even to the exceptions, a literature in which the art of combining lofty words with paltry significance has reached its height. I can certainly never escape from the errors and weaknesses which, in my case as in every one else’s, necessarily belong to my nature ; but I will not increase them by unworthy accommodations.

As regards this second edition, first of all I am glad to say that after five and twenty years I find nothing to retract; so that my fundamental convictions have only been confirmed, as far as concerns myself at least. The alterations in the first volume therefore, which contains the whole text of the first edition, nowhere touch what is essential. Sometimes they concern things of merely secondary importance, and more often consist of very short explanatory additions inserted here and ther& Only the criticism of the Kantian philosophy has received important corrections and large additions, for these could not be put into a supplementary book, such as

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xxiii