The introduction to the book is grandiose: it consists of the three prefaces which the neglected author wrote at long intervals, for each of the three editions of 1818, 1844, and 1859. They are haughty and bitter, but in no way unquiet; rich in profound thoughts, and in the sharpest sarcasm; the lyricism of a Goethe shows itself in union with the cutting realism of a Bismarck. They are beautiful with that classic and measured beauty which is rare in German literature. Friedrich Nietzsche was conquered by their loftiness, their artistic feeling, their entire liberty. "I think," wrote Schopenhauer, "that the truth which a man has discovered, or the light which he has projected on some obscure point, may, one day, strike another thinking being, may move, rejoice, and console him; and it is to this man one speaks, as other spirits like to ours have spoken to us and consoled us in this desert of life." Nietzsche was moved: it seemed to him that a strayed genius was addressing him alone. The world which Schopenhauer describes is formidable. No Providence guides it, no God inhabits it, inflexible laws draw it in chains through time and space; but its eternal essence is indifferent to laws, a stranger to reason: it is that blind Will which urges us into life. All the phenomena of the universe are rays from that Will, just as all the days of the year are rays from a single sun. That Will is invariable, it is infinite; divided, compressed in space. "It nourishes itself upon itself, since outside of it there is nothing, and since it is a famishing Will." Therefore, it tortures itself and suffers. Life is a desire, desire is an unending torment. The good souls of the nineteenth century believe in the dignity of man, in Progress. They are the dupes of a superstition. The Will ignores men, the "last comers on the earth who live on an average thirty years." Progress is a stupid invention of the philosophers, under the inspiration of the crowd: Will, an offence to reason, has neither origin nor end; it is absurd, and the universe which it animates is without sense....