Schopenhauer again, this time on what we should contemplate

I was running this morning and the idea came to me that too many writers, and I suspected, Shopenhauer among them, were putting too much effort in trying pull everything into their philosophy. This was most evident in The World as Will and Idea when Shopenhauer took half a chapter to expound on humor.  Better, I thought at that moment to try to understand one small thing, but understand it in depth. I didn't think understanding completely was possible. 

And then this passage was read: "Therefore we lose nothing by standing still beside any single individual thing, and true wisdom is not to be gained by measuring out the boundless world, or, what would be more to the purpose, by actually traversing endless space. It is rather to be attained by the thorough investigation of any individual thing, for thus we seek to arrive at a full knowledge and understanding of its true and peculiar nature" (Will and Idea, Haldane and Kemp 168).

This passage taken out of context in one respect, as the context of the book, and in context in another respect, as the time and space of my run. However, treat Schopenhauer fairly, here's the full passage, which I think provides sufficient context to clarify what Schopenhauer means:

"Men have tried in various ways to bring the immeasurable greatness of the material universe nearer to the comprehension of us all, and then they have seized the opportunity to make edifying remarks. They have referred perhaps to the relative smallness of the earth, and indeed of man; or, on the contrary, they have pointed out the greatness of the mind of this man who is so insignificant—the mind that can solve, comprehend, and even measure the greatness of the universe, and so forth. Now, all this is very well, but to me, when I consider the vastness [pg 168] of the world, the most important point is this, that the thing-in-itself, whose manifestation is the world—whatever else it may be—cannot have its true self spread out and dispersed after this fashion in boundless space, but that this endless extension belongs only to its manifestation. The thing-in-itself, on the contrary, is present entire and undivided in every object of nature and in every living being. Therefore we lose nothing by standing still beside any single individual thing, and true wisdom is not to be gained by measuring out the boundless world, or, what would be more to the purpose, by actually traversing endless space. It is rather to be attained by the thorough investigation of any individual thing, for thus we seek to arrive at a full knowledge and understanding of its true and peculiar nature.

"The subject which will therefore be fully considered in the next book, and which has, doubtless, already presented itself to the mind of every student of Plato, is, that these different grades of the objectification of will which are manifested in innumerable individuals, and exist as their unattained types or as the eternal forms of things, not entering themselves into time and space, which are the medium of individual things, but remaining fixed, subject to no change, always being, never becoming, while the particular things arise and pass away, always become and never are,—that these grades of the objectification of will are, I say, simply Plato's Ideas. I make this passing reference to the matter here in order that I may be able in future to use the word Idea in this sense" (167-168)