Essays of Schopenhauer

Suicide may also be looked upon as an experiment, as a question which man puts to Nature and compels her to answer. It asks, what change a man's existence and knowledge of things experience through death? It is an awkward experiment to make; for it destroys the very consciousness that awaits the answer.

notes

1

Wallace's Life, pp. 95, 96.

2

Wallace, p. 108.

3

Haldane and Kemp's The World as Will and Idea.

4

Wallace, p. 145.

5

Schopenhauer here gives an example of this bombastic style which would be of little interest to English readers. – TRANSLATOR.

6

Opera et dies, v. 40.

7

Schopenhauer here at length points out various common errors in the writing and speaking of German which would lose significance in a translation. – TR.

8

According to a notice from the Munich Society for the Protection of Animals, the superfluous whipping and cracking were strictly forbidden in Nuremberg in December 1858.

9

Let me refer to what I have said in my treatise on The Foundation of Morals, § 71.

10

Brunck's Gnomici poetae graeci v. 115.

11

Bk. I., ch. 9.

12

See Essay on Noise, p. 28.

13

De Anim. Mundi, p. 104, d. Steph.

14

Grundpr. der Ethik, p. 48; Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. i. p. 338.

15

Vierfache Wurzel, § 21.

16

Pererga, vol. ii. § 311.

17

Ch. xxvi. 23.

18

De vita longa i. 5.

19

Translated by St. Julien, 1834.

20

See my treatise on the Foundation of Morals, § 5.

21

Bd. I. p. 69.