Omar calls us a moving row of shadow-shapes, impotent pieces on the chequer-board; and there is no use looking to the sky for help, for the sky is as impotent as we.

We find then our two philosophers in complete agreement as to the insignificance of man and the hopelessness of his future: there remains, however, this question. The two doctors have both condemned us: our case is indeed hopeless: but what are we going to do? Although of no importance to our neighbours, and of no interest to God, still, here we are and here we must stay until merciful annihilation relieves us. What shall we do to make ourselves as comfortable as possible? Now to this question, which surely has some value to us, Schopenhauer and Omar give precisely opposite answers.

Schopenhauer says the problem is to escape from personality, from selfhood, from the domination of will: and strangely enough he makes this retreat possible only through the intellect, by means of that very consciousness which he has declared to be the mistake of our being. Men of genius are freed at intervals from the will, because of the high order of their intellect, which permits them to be lost in æsthetic contemplation of the Universals, the Platonic Ideas: to attain to this state of blessedness, all willing and striving for pleasure must be absolutely abandoned, for it is only as one

contemplates one's self in the third person that one finds any respite from suffering. The wise man will cut off everything that connects him with the world, will resolutely sacrifice the longing for happiness, and, by the examples of saints and martyrs, will endeavour to become as unworldly and as impersonal as they. This is the gospel according to Schopenhauer: this is the only way to overcome the world.

Omar does not only dislike this remedy, he specifically condemns it. He wishes indeed to escape from self, but in a quite different sense: we must escape from self-introspection, from philosophical meditation, from the subjective life. The shortest route to this refuge is the alcoholic one, which he earnestly recommends. Increase of knowledge increaseth sorrow. Why throw away the short time we have in ascetic negation? The positive pleasures of life are within our reach. To see the total difference in the practical philosophy of our two guides, let us compare their eloquence. From Schopenhauer:

True salvation, deliverance from life and suffering, cannot even be imagined without complete denial of the will. If we turn our glance from our own needy and embarrassed condition to those who have overcome the world, in whom the will, having attained to perfect self-knowledge, found itself again in all, and then freely denied itself and who then merely wait to see the last trace of it vanish with

the body which it animates: then, instead of the restless striving and effort, instead of the constant transition from wish to fruition, and from joy to sorrow, instead of the never-satisfied and never-dying hope which constitutes the life of the man who wills, we shall see that peace which is above all reason, that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence and serenity, the mere reflection of which in the countenance, as Raphael and Correggio have represented it, is an entire and certain gospel: only knowledge remains, the will has vanished.

From Omar :

"You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse
I made a second marriage in my house:
Divorced old barren Reason from my bed,
And took the daughter of the Vine to spouse.

Come, fill the cup and in the fire of spring
Your winter-garment of repentance fling:
The bird of time has but a little way

To flutter and the bird is on the wing."

The German's way of salvation is from the will to the intellect: the Persian's from the intellect to the will.

Goethe permitted Faust to try both systems, and to find salvation in neither; and for our edification there are many people walking in each way at this moment, whose experiment we may observe. Faust discovered that asceticism and sensuality both led to misery; that the only course which brought true happiness was faith in God and active devotion to man, which is the teaching of Chris

tianity. Schopenhauer's philosophy is perhaps greater and grander than Omar's, but while they both interest us, neither can save us. Absolute pessimism cannot lead to a rational or noble way of life and there is hardly more virtue in asceticism than there is in pleasure.

ΧΙ

LESSING AS A CREATIVE CRITIC

GERMANY did not become a world-power in literature until after 1750. This is a remarkable fact, in view of what had been going on for centuries in Italy, France, Spain, and England. So far as a nation can owe a whole literature to one man, Germany owes hers to Lessing.

The realistic picture of depravity which Paul drew in the first part of his letter to the Romans would fairly represent the condition of Germany at the close of the Thirty Years' War. The civilisation of the Fatherland relapsed fully two centuries. There was nothing remotely resembling a national spirit. The unscrupulous selfishness of the petty princes, who had cynically abandoned even the semblance of virtue, had its harsh counterpart in the condition of the common people, where ignorance was linked with despair. With political and social affairs on such a level, the standard of literature was flat. For if literature is the life of history, how can we have activity in the former when the latter is dead? How can the spirit of healthy and vigorous life breathe out of decay?