Schopenhauer is a temperamental pessimist. In words of glowing and passionate eloquence he sets out to prove that all life is essentially sorrow. From his earliest days he had been abnormally sensitive to the misery that lies beneath the surface of life. Pain is essential to life and cannot be evaded. If it can find entrance in no other form, then it comes in the sad, grey garments of tedium and ennui. The purest joy in life is that which lifts us out of our daily existence, and transforms us into disinterested spectators of it. This "divine release from the common ways of men" can only be found through art. But even this release, which is accessible only to the few, increases the capacity for suffering. The final and only permanent solution of life is to be found in the life of the saint. True morality passes through virtue, which is rooted in sympathy, into asceticism. Art gives a marvellous consolation in life, but renunciation and self-surrender offer a complete release from the terrors and evils of existence. The veil of Mâyâ--the web of illusion--is lifted from man's eyes. He now shudders at the pleasures which recognise the assertion of life, and attains to the state of voluntary renunciation, resignation, and true indifference. Buddhism, Schopenhauer maintained, comes nearest of all religions to expressing this truth. It is here that he shows how profoundly Indian philosophy and religion had influenced him. Throughout his life Schopenhauer was aggressively hostile towards all contemporary philosophers. To some extent, no doubt, his own failure to obtain academic {11} recognition embittered him. But partly his attitude may be explained by the complete difference of method between them. Schopenhauer cares nothing at all about method. To Hegel and his contemporaries method was all-important. The historical method was the pathway which was followed with most enthusiasm at the time. It is especially for the historical method that Schopenhauer has the frankest contempt. Hegel and others were attempting to interpret present reality through history, seeking to show that through the slow process of history, unfolding itself in time, are revealed the organic principles which underlie the whole of life. Schopenhauer attaches practically no value to history as a highroad for philosophical inquiry. This way, he says, lie merely the dry bones of archæology and antiquarianism. To examine things historically is to look along a horizontal line. To think philosophically is to look along a vertical line. The latter is the rational and the more profound point of view. "What history narrates is in fact only the long, heavy, and confused dream of humanity." It is our inmost consciousness which is the real concern of the philosopher. "The true philosophy of history," he says, "consists in the insight into the causes of all these endless changes and their confusion. We have always before us the same even,