A Place of Penance

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 12, § 156 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway): In order to have a sure compass always in hand for finding our bearings in life, and in order to view life always in the proper light without ever going astray, nothing is more useful than to accustom oneself to regarding this world as a place of penance, hence as a prison, a penal colony as it were, a labour camp as it was already called by the oldest philosophers (according to Clement of Alexandria, Stromata III, c. 3, p. 399). Among the Christian fathers Origen formulated it with commendable boldness (see Augustine, The City of God, XI, ch. 23). Um allezeit einen sichern Kompass, zur Orientierung im Leben, bei der Hand zu haben, und um dasselbe, ohne je irre zu werden, stets im richtigen Lichte zu erblicken, ist nichts tauglicher, als dafs man sich angewöhne, diese Welt zu betrachten als einen Ort der Busse, also gleichsam als eine Strafanstalt, a…