# The mouse's pessimism and Schopenhauer's predator

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH07.P003](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH07.P003/#char=1012,1114): "But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all."

Schopenhauer offers a particularly close comparison: to test whether pleasure outweighs pain, consider the feelings of an animal eating another. Chesterton turns that grim comparison into a reversal of the apparent winner. Continued existence becomes the cat's punishment.

The inspected witness is T. Bailey Saunders's English selection *Studies in Pessimism*, as transcribed by Project Gutenberg, especially 'On the Sufferings of the World.' Its prefatory note explicitly identifies it as a selective arrangement from *Parerga*, not an original book bearing that English title; *Parerga und Paralipomena* first appeared in 1851. The resemblance explains the philosophical joke without proving a specific allusion. Nor is the mouse's triumphant death a complete account of Schopenhauer: 'On Suicide' distinguishes genuine release from suffering from the merely apparent release obtained by killing oneself. [Saunders translation](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10732/10732-h/10732-h.htm); [publication history](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/schopenhauer-parerga-and-paralipomena/versions-of-schopenhauers-text/784CCD010C4ECB2BA11B523BD2D5304A).

## Sources

- [Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism, translated by T. Bailey Saunders](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10732/10732-h/10732-h.htm), Translator's Note; On the Sufferings of the World, paragraph beginning 'The pleasure in this world'; On Suicide, paragraph beginning 'In my chief work'
- [Versions of Schopenhauer's Text](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/schopenhauer-parerga-and-paralipomena/versions-of-schopenhauers-text/784CCD010C4ECB2BA11B523BD2D5304A), Opening bibliographical entry: 1851, Parerga und Paralipomena

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