@讀立
Part of the cause of pessimism, in Schopenhauer and his contemporaries, lay in their romantic attitudes and expecta- tions. Youth expects too much of the world ; pessimism is the morning after optimism, just as 1815 had to pay for 1789. The romantic exaltation and liberation of feeling, instinct and will, and the romantic contempt for intellect, restraint, and order, brought their natural penalties; for “the world,” as Horace Walpole said, “is a comedy for those who think, but a tragedy for those who feel.” “Perhaps no movement has been so prolific of melancholy as emotional romanticism. . . . When the romanticist discovers that his ideal of happiness works out into actual unhappiness, he does not blame his ideal. He simply assumes that the world is unworthy of a being so exquisitely organized as himself.” 1 How could a capricious universe ever satisfy a capricious soul?
Will Durant, Story of Philosophy