Without peace no true well-being is possible. But when some external cause or inward disposition lifts us suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, and knowledge is delivered from the slavery of the will, we have a vision of things free from this relation of the will. We can observe them without personal interest, without subjectivity. Then, all at once, the peace which we are always seeking, but which always fled from us on the path of the desires, comes to us of its own accord, and it is well with us. This is the painless state, which Epicurus prized as the highest good, and as the state of the gods. We are then set free from the miserable striving of the will. It is this deliverance that art effects for us, and which is accomplished only by the inner power of the artistic nature. Art frees us from all subjectivity, from the bondage of the will. This freeing of knowledge lifts us out of all the misery of endless desire, as wholly and entirely as do sleep and dreams. Happiness and unhappiness have disappeared. We are no longer individuals. We are only that one eye of the world, which looks out from all knowing creatures, but which can become perfectly free from the service of the will in man alone. Art provides us with a sphere, in which we can escape from all our misery, and can attain to a state of temporary peace and painlessness. {61} There is a curious affinity between the æsthetic theories of one of the mediæval mystics and those of Schopenhauer. St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the schoolmen, expounded views in the thirteenth century akin in many respects to those set forth by Schopenhauer at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Beauty, he held, is the revelation of reason in sensuous shape, and he proceeds further to say that in the realisation of beauty desire is quieted. Art is the most joy-giving and the only innocent side of life. It is, says Schopenhauer, in the full significance of the word, the flower of life. The pleasure which we receive from all beauty, the consolation which art affords, enables us to forget the cares of life. This pleasure consists in the contemplation of the Ideas, in the contemplation of the inner truth of life, which reveals to us a drama full of significance. In entering into the state of pure contemplation, our happiness lies in the sense of being lifted, for the time being, above all willing, beyond all wishes and desires. We become freed from ourselves. These moments when, sunk in contemplation and enjoyment of the work of art, we are delivered from the ardent striving of the will, when we seem to rise out of the heavy atmosphere of earth, these moments are the happiest which we ever know. The arts themselves Schopenhauer arranges according to their subject-matter rather than according to their medium. He places them in very much the same order as that in which Hegel puts them. Architecture, painting and sculpture, poetry and music are each discussed in turn.