Voltaire says, somewhere, "I do not know what the life eternal may be, but at all events this one is a very poor joke." In this sentiment Schopenhauer solemnly concurred. That which was a _boutade_ to the one became a theory to the other, and it is to his treatment of this subject that the attention of the reader is now invited. The introduction which he gives to it, if not as light as the overture to a ballet, will, it is believed, still be found both interesting and instructive, while its conclusion and supplement form, it may be noted, an admitted part of that which is best of the modern essayists. The first chapter opens with an enumeration of those possessions which differentiate the lot of man, and which in so doing form the basis of possible happiness. It has been said that the happiest land is the one which has little, if any, need of importations, and he notes that the man is most contented whose interior wealth suffices for his own amusement, and who demands but little, if anything, from the exterior world. Or, as Oliver Goldsmith has expressed it,-- "Still to ourselves in ev'ry place consigned Our own felicity we make or find." "In a world such as ours," Schopenhauer thinks, "he who has much to draw upon from within is not unlike a room in which stands a Christmas tree, bright, warm, and joyous, while all about are the snows and icicles of a December night." That which a man is in himself, that which accompanies him into solitude, and which none can give him or take from him, is necessarily more essential than all that he may possess or all that he may appear in the eyes of others. The scholar, for instance, even when utterly alone feeds most agreeably on his own thoughts, and we are most of us very well aware that he whose intelligence is limited may ceaselessly vary his festivals and amusements without ever succeeding in freeing himself from the baleful weariness of boredom.