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Tl TRANSLATOR S PREFACE.
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 pub
lished in the present volume have of course become an
tiquated, 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 1 can have no interest for the reader of the pre
sent 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 be less indis
may
pensable 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 im
portance 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 resume 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
J
See
"
Will in
Nature," pp. 9-18 of the original j pp. 224-234 of the
present translation.