Volumes Ill and IV of our edition of the Manuscript Remains contain the sketches and notes which Schopenhauer' recorded in his manuscript-books in the four decades from the completion of his main work up to the time of his death. There are ten books which were catalogued in the Royal Library in Berlin with the numbers VII-XIV and XVII-XVIII; in addition there is an index-volume (XV) compiled by Schopenhauer himself The books were already bound when
Schopenhauer took them into use. Their shape and size are different. small octavo (Nos. XVII and XVIIl),quarto (Nos. XIII and XIV) and folio (all the others). Schopenhauer took with him Nos. XVII and XVIII on both his Italian journeys, and their format and arrangement are in keeping with this purpose. The remaining eight volumes were of use to him at his desk. On the first sheets Schopenhauer wrote from time to time his name, the title and date of commencement of the book
and also frequently entered a motto. We give on p. vii a summary of all ten books (cf. Vol. I, pp. viii-x).
The present third volume embraces the first five of these
manuscript-books which contain Schopenhauer's notes and sketches of twelve years (from September 1818 to January 1830). In addition to these sketches, there is the essay on "Eristic Dialectics" which is self-contained and is separated as an independent work from the philosophical lectures. On the other hand, the first translation of Gracián's "Handorakel", which likewise originated in the last Berlin years, is more suitably assigned to Volume IV. It is merely a preliminary work to the complete rendering of 1832 and must be taken into consideration with this.