When at times I felt unhappy, this was by virtue of a misunderstanding, of a flaw in my person. I then took myself to be other than I was and then lamented that other person's misery and distress, e.g., for a Privatdozent who does not become a professor and has no one to hear his lectures; or for the one of whom the philistines speak ill and the gossips spread stories; or for the defendant in an assault case; or for the lover who will not be heard by the girl with whom he is infatuated; or for the patient who is kept at home by illness; or to be other similar people who are affected by like miseries. I have not been any of these. All of this is strange cloth from which at most the coat had been made that I wore for a while and that I then discarded in exchange for another. But then who am I? The man who has written the World as Will and Representation and has provided a solution to the great problem of existence that perhaps will render obsolete all previous solutions, but which in any case will engage thinkers in the centuries to come. I am that man, and what could disturb him in the few years in which he has still to draw breath?