y part of the world,
like immortals whose youth is ever fresh. They alone form what I have
distinguished as _real_ literature, the history of which, although poor
in persons, we learn from our youth up out of the mouths of educated
people, and not first of all from compilations. As a specific against
the present prevailing monomania for reading literary histories, so that
one may be able to chatter about everything without really knowing
anything, let me refer you to a passage from Lichtenberg which is well
worth reading (vol. ii. p. 302 of the old edition).

But I wish some one would attempt a _tragical history of literature_,
showing how the greatest writers and artists have been treated during
their lives by the various nations which have produced them and whose
proudest possessions they are. It would show us the endless fight which
the good and genuine works of all periods and countries have had to
carry on against the perverse and bad. It would depict the martyrdom of
almost all those who truly enlightened humanity, of almost all the great
masters in every kind of art; it would show us how they, with few
exceptions, were tormented without recognition, without any to share
their misery, without followers; how they existed in poverty and misery
whilst fame, honour, and riches fell to the lot of the worthless; it
would reveal that what happened to them happened to Esau, who, while
hunting the deer for his father, was robbed of the blessing by Jacob
disguised in his brother's coat; and how through it all the love of
their subject kept them up, until at last the trying fight of such a
teacher of the human race is ended, the immortal laurel offered to him,
and the time come when it can be said of him

"Der schwere Panzer wird zum Fluegelkleide
Kurz ist der Schmerz, unendlich ist die Freude."

THE EMPTINESS OF EXISTENCE.

This emptiness finds its expression in the whole form of existence, in
the infiniteness of Time and Space as opposed to the finiteness of the
individual in both; in the flitting present as the only manner of real
existence; in the dependence and relativity of all things; in constantly
Becoming without Being; in continually wishing without being satisfied;
in an incessant thwarting of one's efforts, which go to make up life,
until victory is won. _Time_, and the _transitoriness_ of all things,
are merely the form under which the will to live, which as the
thing-in-itself is imperishable, h