And Schopenhauer rounds off the whole with these lines, “Thus, between desiring and attaining all human life flows on. The wish is in its nature pain, the attainment ... satiety: the end is an illusion and possession takes away charm. The wish, the need, presents itself under a new form, or when it does not, follows desolateness, emptiness, ennui against which the conflict is just as painful as against want.” And just as the superior animal is the most suffering of all animals, so the superior man is the most suffering of all men. The calm joy of science, the pleasure of the beautiful, the delight in art--“these things demanding rare talents are granted to very few, and to those few only as a passing dream. And then even these few on account of their higher intellectual power are made susceptible of far greater suffering than duller minds can ever feel. Moreover such men are placed in lonely isolation by a nature obviously different from that of others, so that here too accounts are squared.” As for the ordinary man, his being “is a weary longing and complaining, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life to death--accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts.” “Every human being and his course of life is but another short dream of the endless spirit of nature, the persistent will to live; is only another fleeting form which [nature] carelessly sketches in its infinite pages ... allows to remain for a time so short it vanishes into nothing ... and then obliterates to make new room.” * * * * * From a previous passage touching on the life and character of Schopenhauer it may have been gathered that his was no very lovable personality. And being unlovable, it is not surprising that he was little loved; neither by wife nor child, which he had not; neither by mother nor sister, which he had and offended; nor yet by close friends which if he had for a moment he usually managed to estrange. It is true, perhaps, that his dog loved him, the inseparable poodle whom the children of the neighborhood used to call der junge Schopenhauer, for the tenderest side of Schopenhauer’s make-up was turned toward dumb animals. But the love of a dog is a poor substitute for all other loves, and it is not surprising that certain minds to whom optimism is a foregone conclusion should have dismissed Schopenhauer with the observation that to him who looks through clouded glasses the world must needs be dark.