On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and on the Will in Nature; Two Essays

Vll expresses them, I have necessarily encountered many and great difficulties. His meaning, though always clearly ex pressed, is not always easy to seize, even for his countrymen; as a foreigner, therefore, I may often have failed to grasp, let alone adequately to render, that meaning. In this case besides, the responsibility for any want of perspicuity cannot be shifted by the translator on to the Author ;since the consummate perfection of Schopenhauer sprose is universally recognised, even by those who reject, or at least who do not share, his views. An eminent German writer of our time has not hesitated to rank him immediately after Lessing and Gothe as the third greatest German prose-writer, and only quite recently a German professor, in a speech de livered with the intent of demolishing Schopenhauer sphilosophy, was reluctantly obliged to admit that his works would remain on account of their literary value. Gothe himself expressed admiration for the clearness of exposition in Schopenhauer schief work and for the beauty of his style. The chief obstacle I have encountered in translating these Essays, did not therefore consist in the obscurity of the Author sstyle, nor even in the difficulty of finding appropriate terms wherewith to convey his meaning; although at times certainly the want of complete precision in our philo sophical terminology made itself keenly felt and the selection was often far from easy: it lay rather in the great difference in the way of thinking and of expressing their thoughts which lies between the two nations. The regions of German and English thought are indeed separated by a gulf, which at first seems impassable, yet which must be bridged over by some means or other, if a right comprehension is to be achieved.
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