Schopenhauer On Latin

"Der Mensch, welcher kein Latein versteht, gleicht Einem, der sich in einer schönen Gegend bei nebligem Wetter befindet; sein Horizont ist äußerst beschränkt; nur das Nächste sieht er deutlich, wenige Schritte darüber hinaus verliert es sich ins Unbestimmte. Der Horizont des Lateiners hingegen geht sehr weit, durch die neueren Jahrhunderte, das Mittelalter, das Alterthum. -- Griechisch, oder gar noch Sanskrit, erweitern freilich den Horizont noch um ein Beträchtliches. — Wer kein Latein versteht, gehört zum Volke, auch wenn er ein großer Virtuose auf der Elektrisiermaschine wäre und das Radikal der Flussspatsäure im Tiegel hätte."

("A person who doesn't understand any Latin resembles someone who finds himself in a beautiful landscape in foggy weather: his horizon is extremely limited. He sees only the closet things clearly; a few steps away everything dissolves into uncertainty. The horizon of the Latinist, on the other hand, is very broad, going through recent centuries, the Middle Ages and antiquity. -- Greek, or even Sanskrit, widens the horizon much more still. -- One who understands no Latin belongs to the masses, even if he's a great virtuoso in electronics and knows the composition of the radical of fluoridic acid.")

-- Arthur Schopenhauer, Paralipomena, ch 25: "Über Sprache und Worte." ("Concerning Languages and Words.")

There are many quotations from other authors in Schopenhauer's works, above all quotations in Greek and Latin. Schopenhauer follows Greek quotations with translations -- into Latin. He doesn't bother to translate those passages originally written in Latin, he assumes his readers can read Latin. Actually, he doesn't translate some of the shorter Greek citations either, if they're only a few words long. The 1986 Suhrkamp edition of Schopenhauer's works makes no such assumptions: all non-German quotations are followed by German translations. In this edition, a passage from Plato in the original Greek is followed by Schopenhauer's translation into Latin (or not, if it's just a word or two) and then by Suhrkamp's translation into German.

Who's doing better by his readers -- Schopenhauer, or Suhrkamp's editor, Wolfgang Frhr von Löhneysen?