The great effect of the philosophy of Schopenhauer has probably been indirect. When the young undergraduate of Oxford enunciated the belief that there is nothing new and nothing true, and no matter, he probably thought that he was quoting the beliefs of the great woman-hater; but it was reserved for a mind far nobler and more truly poetical to see the real inner meaning of Schopenhauer’s thoughts. The great discovery of Schopenhauer was that the evil in man has quite as much to do with his character as the good. Thomas Hardy, in writing the _Woodlanders_ and _Tess of the D’Urbervilles_, was really transfiguring Schopenhauer’s somewhat arid philosophy until it became a beautiful truth. Hardy, in a sense, was simply a reaction from the foolish optimism of the Victorians; from the cheerful caricaturing of human nature by Charles Dickens; from the mock cynicism of Thackeray. That some people still say that his novels are grey and unduly pessimistic simply means that they have not yet grasped the full truth about human nature. And surely Hardy’s “Immanent Will” was truly Schopenhaueresque. Healthy minds have converted Schopenhauer’s pessimism into the gentle pessimism of the present day, which may be rather beautiful and poetical than hideous. That Schopenhauer could be so vulgarly insulting to women was simply the index of his own diseased mind. His opinions about women were merely an instance of the utterly degrading effect of syphilis upon the human brain and soul. Baruch Spinoza This, the most wonderful of all philosophers, the most daring, the most scientific, was born, a little Jew of Portuguese descent, in Amsterdam on November 28th, 1632, at a time when the European world was riven by the fiercest sectarian contention; when the hounds of the Spanish Inquisition were baying hell-fire and destruction to any man who should dare to differ from the dogmas of the pope as to objective truth. He grew up to be a typical Oriental—like Jesus Himself—with all the Oriental powers of mysticism.