another lot on the earth, being guided therein by their experience in their last life; and so, having drunk of the waters of forgetfulness, came back to earth once more, unconscious of their past. Let us, then, believing that the soul is indeed immortal, hold fast to knowledge and justice, that it may be well with us both here and hereafter. ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER The World as Will and Idea Arthur Schopenhauer, who was born at Dantzig, in Germany, Feb. 22, 1788, and died September 21, 1860, came of highly intellectual antecedents, his mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, being a noted German authoress. As an indefatigable student he migrated, according to the fashion of his Fatherland, from one university to another, in order to sit at the feet of various professors, and thus he attended courses at Gottingen, Berlin, and Jena successively, finally graduating at Jena in 1813. The winter of that year he spent at Weimar, revelling in the society of Goethe, and also enjoying intercourse with Maier, the profound Orientalist, who indoctrinated him with those views of Indian mysticism which greatly influenced his future philosophic disquisitions. After writing and publishing a few slight treatises Schopenhauer sent forth his great work, "The World as Will and Idea," which has immortalized him. It appeared in 1819. During subsequent years, when he resided in Frankfort, he wrote his volumes on "Will in Nature," "The Freedom of the Will," "The Basis of Morals," and "Parerga and Paralipomena." The keynote of Schopenhauer's philosophy is that the sole essential reality in the universe is the will, and that all visible and tangible phenomena are merely subjective representations, or formal manifestations of that will which is the only thing-in-itself that actually subsists. Thus he stands among philosophers as the uncompromising antagonist of Hegel, Fichte, Schelling and all the champions of the theory of consciousness and absolute reason as the essential foundation of the faculty of thought. The defect of his system is its tendency to a sombre pessimism, but his literary style is magnificent and his power of reasoning is exceptional. The epitome here given has been prepared from the original German. _I.--The World as Idea_ "The world is my idea," is a truth valid for every living creature, though only man can consciously contemplate it. In doing so he attains philosophical wisdom. No truth is more absolutely certain than that all that exists for knowledge, and therefore this whole world, is only object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea. The world is idea.