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Vlll
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 resume contained in the Introduction
which could not be divided without
l
to his "Will in Nature,"
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
1
Pp. 2 and 3 of the original, and pp. 216 to 218 of the present
translation.