There is a strong appeal in this ideal of human life, which Schopenhauer depicts in words of glowing eloquence. Based on the pessimism which claims that all life is worthless, it aims at conquering life by withdrawing altogether from it. This is a negative solution of the problem of life. It is possible to oppose to this philosophy a robuster view, which would come to grips with the misery and evil of existence on another plane. {93} William James points to the spiritual gain that comes of fighting ills. To wage war obstinately against the odds of life fills us with courage and resolution, and there is possibly a deeper satisfaction to be won from the determined facing of the battle of life than in the attitude of pessimism, which bids us draw back and take no part in the fray. There is a fine courage in the attitude of mind, which admits "the deliciousness of insanities and realities, strivings and deadnesses, hopes and fears, agonies and exultations," but which claims that we who are born for the conflict, the shifting struggle of the sunbeam in the gloom, must accept it all as a vital part of the whole. "When the healthy love of life is on one, and all its forms and its appetites seem so unutterably real; when the most brutal and the most spiritual things are lit by the same sun, and each is an integral part of the total richness, it seems a grudging and sickly way of meeting so robust a universe to shrink away from any of its facts and wish them not to be. Rather take the strictly dramatic point of view, and treat the whole thing as a great unending romance which the spirit of the universe, striving to realise its own content, is eternally thinking out and representing to itself." {94} BIBLIOGRAPHY A. ENGLISH _The World as Will and Idea_. Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp. 3 vols. 1883-6. London: The English and Foreign Philosophical Library. _Two Essays. I. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. II. On the Will in Nature_. Bonn's Philosophical Library. 1889. _Selected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer_. Translated by E. Belfort Bax. London: Bohn. _Religion: A Dialogue; and other Essays_. Translated by T. Bailey Saunders. 1891. London: Swan Sonnenschein. Pp. 140. _The Wisdom of Life_. Essays translated by T. B. Saunders. 1890. London: Swan Sonnenschein. and Co. Pp. xxvi, 135. _Counsels and Maxims_. Translated by T. B. Saunders. 1895. London: Swan Sonnenschein. Pp. 162. _The Art of Literature_. Essays translated by T. B. Saunders. 1891. London: Swan Sonnenschein Pp. xiv, 149. _Studies in Pessimism_. Essays translated by T. B. Saunders. 1891. London: Swan Sonnenschein. Pp. 142. _On Human Nature_. Essays translated by T. B. Saunders. 1902. London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co. Pp. 132. {95} _Life of Arthur Schopenhauer_. W. Wallace. 1890. London: Scott. Pp. 217. _Arthur Schopenhauer, His Life and His Philosophy_. Helen Zimmern. 1876. London: Longmans. Pp. 249.