Schopenhauer points to the children, who are sent {47} into factories to work there daily for long hours, performing day after day the same mechanical task. This, he adds, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. Everyone would have declined the "gift" of life, if he could have seen it and tested it beforehand. But life has never been chosen freely. Everyone would retire from the struggle gladly, but want and boredom are the whips which keep the top spinning. Every individual bears the stamp of a forced condition. Inwardly weary, he longs for rest, but yet he must press forward. All movement is forced, and men are pushed from behind. It is not life that tempts them on, but necessity that drives them forward. Suicide is no solution of the problem of life. It is not to be regarded as a crime, as in the code of modern society. But there is a valid moral reason against it, in that it substitutes for the real emancipation from the world of suffering, a merely apparent one. So far from being a denial of the will, suicide is indeed a strong assertion of the will. The suicide destroys merely the individual manifestation of life. The wilful destruction of the single existence is a vain and foolish act. The suicide gives up living, because he cannot give up willing. He denies the individual only, not the species. There is a more adequate way of conquering life than by destroying it, which Schopenhauer expounds when he deals with the ethical aspect of his philosophy. His analysis of the worth of human life, as represented in this theory of pessimism, is the most passionate and terrible indictment of existence which has ever found expression. His sense of disenchantment is felt with such intensity, that it colours and distorts the whole fabric of his vision of life. There is much affinity between the character and {48} work of Schopenhauer and that of Leopardi. In both are displayed penetrating profundity of thought, extraordinary beauty of expression, and deep insight into the workings of the human mind, while the same passionate revolt against the misery of life colours the outlook and achievement of philosopher and poet alike. Schopenhauer was acquainted with the writings of Leopardi, and had great admiration for his work. His subject, he says, is always the mockery and wretchedness of existence, and he presents it with such wealth of imagery, such multiplicity of forms and applications, that he never wearies us, but is always entertaining and exciting. This estimate of the work of Leopardi might with equal justice be applied to Schopenhauer himself.