V.

But I have promised to speak of Schopenhauer, as far as my experience

goes, as an _educator_, and it is far from being sufficient to paint

the ideal humanity which is the "Platonic idea" in Schopenhauer;

especially as my representation is an imperfect one. The most

difficult task remains;--to say how a new circle of duties may spring

from this ideal, and how one can reconcile such a transcendent aim

with ordinary action; to prove, in short, that the ideal is

_educative_. One might otherwise think it to be merely the blissful

or intoxicating vision of a few rare moments, that leaves us

afterwards the prey of a deeper disappointment. It is certain that

the ideal begins to affect us in this way when we come suddenly to

distinguish light and darkness, bliss and abhorrence; this is an

experience that is as old as ideals themselves. But we ought not to

stand in the doorway for long; we should soon leave the first stages,

and ask the question, seriously and definitely, "Is it possible to

bring that incredibly high aim so near us, that it should educate us,

or 'lead us out,' as well as lead us upward?"--in order that the

great words of Goethe be not fulfilled in our case--"Man is born to a

state of limitation: he can understand ends that are simple, present

and definite, and is accustomed to make use of means that are near to

his hand; but as soon as he comes into the open, he knows neither

what he wishes nor what he ought to do, and it is all one whether he

be confused by the multitude of objects or set beside himself by

their greatness and importance. It is always his misfortune to be led

to strive after something which he cannot attain by any ordinary

activity of his own." The objection can be made with apparent reason

against Schopenhauer's man, that his greatness and dignity can only

turn our heads, and put us beyond all community with the active men

of the world: the common round of duties, the noiseless tenor of life

has disappeared. One man may possibly get accustomed to living in a

reluctant dualism, that is, in a contradiction with himself;--

becoming unstable, daily weaker and less productive:--while another

will renounce all action on principle, and scarcely endure to see

others active. The danger is always great when a man is too

heavy-laden, and cannot really _accomplish_ any duties. Stronger

natures may be broken by it; the weaker, which are the majority, sink

into a speculative laziness, and at last, from their laziness, lose

even the power of speculation.

With regard to such objections, I will admit that our work has hardly

begun, and so far as I know, I only see one thing clearly and

definitely--that it is possible for that ideal picture to provide you

and me with a chain of duties that may be accomplished; and some of

us already feel its pressure. In order, however, to be able to speak

in plain language of the formula under which I may gather the new

circle of duties, I must begin with the following considerations.

The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals, because they

suffer from life and have not the power to turn the sting of the

suffering against themselves, and understand their being

metaphysically. The sight of blind suffering is the spring of the

deepest emotion. And in many quarters of the earth men have supposed

that the souls of the guilty have entered into beasts, and that the

blind suffering which at first sight calls for such pity has a clear

meaning and purpose to the divine justice,--of punishment and

atonement: and a heavy punishment it is, to be condemned to live in

hunger and need, in the shape of a beast, and to reach no

consciousness of one's self in this life. I can think of no harder

lot than the wild beast's; he is driven to the forest by the fierce

pang of hunger, that seldom leaves him at peace; and peace is itself

a torment, the surfeit after horrid food, won, maybe, by a deadly

fight with other animals. To cling to life, blindly and madly, with

no other aim, to be ignorant of the reason, or even the fact, of

one's punishment, nay, to thirst after it as if it were a pleasure,

with all the perverted desire of a fool--this is what it means to be

an animal. If universal nature leads up to man, it is to show us that

he is necessary to redeem her from the curse of the beast's life, and

that in him existence can find a mirror of itself wherein life

appears, no longer blind, but in its real metaphysical significance.

But we should consider where the beast ends and the man begins--the

man, the one concern of Nature. As long as any one desires life as a

pleasure in itself, he has not raised his eyes above the horizon of

the beast; he only desires more consciously what the beast seeks by a

blind impulse. It is so with us all, for the greater part of our

lives. We do not shake off the beast, but are beasts ourselves,

suffering we know not what.

But there are moments when we do know; and then the clouds break, and

we see how, with the rest of nature, we are straining towards the

man, as to something that stands high above us. We look round and

behind us, and fear the sudden rush of light; the beasts are

transfigured, and ourselves with them. The enormous migrations of

mankind in the wildernesses of the world, the cities they found and

the wars they wage, their ceaseless gatherings and dispersions and

fusions, the doctrines they blindly follow, their mutual frauds and

deceits, the cry of distress, the shriek of victory--are all a

continuation of the beast in us: as if the education of man has been

intentionally set back, and his promise of self-consciousness

frustrated; as if, in fact, after yearning for man so long, and at

last reaching him by her labour, Nature should now recoil from him

and wish to return to a state of unconscious instinct. Ah! she has

need of knowledge, and shrinks before the very knowledge she needs:

the flame flickers unsteadily and fears its own brightness, and takes

hold of a thousand things before the one thing for which knowledge is

necessary. There are moments when we all know that our most elaborate

arrangements are only designed to give us refuge from our real task

in life; we wish to hide our heads somewhere as if our Argus-eyed

conscience could not find us out; we are quick to send our hearts on

state-service, or money-making, or social duties, or scientific work,

in order to possess them no longer ourselves; we are more willing and

instinctive slaves of the hard day's work than mere living requires,

because it seems to us more necessary not to be in a position to

think. The hurry is universal, because every one is fleeing before

himself; its concealment is just as universal, as we wish to seem

contented and hide our wretchedness from the keener eyes; and so

there is a common need for a new carillon of words to hang in the

temple of life, and peal for its noisy festival. We all know the

curious way in which unpleasant memories suddenly throng on us, and

how we do our best by loud talk and violent gestures to put them out

of our minds; but the gestures and the talk of our ordinary life make

one think we are all in this condition, frightened of any memory or

any inward gaze. What is it that is always troubling us? what is the

gnat that will not let us sleep? There are spirits all about us, each

moment of life has something to say to us, but we will not listen to

the spirit-voices. When we are quiet and alone, we fear that

something will be whispered in our ears, and so we hate the quiet,

and dull our senses in society.

We understand this sometimes, as I say, and stand amazed at the whirl

and the rush and the anxiety and all the dream that we call our life;

we seem to fear the awakening, and our dreams too become vivid and

restless, as the awakening draws near. But we feel as well that we

are too weak to endure long those intimate moments, and that we are

not the men to whom universal nature looks as her redeemers. It is

something to be able to raise our heads but for a moment and see the

stream in which we are sunk so deep. We cannot gain even this

transitory moment of awakening by our own strength; we must be lifted

up--and who are they that will uplift us?

The sincere men who have cast out the beast, the philosophers,

artists and saints. Nature--_quæ nunquam facit saltum_--has made her

one leap in creating them; a leap of joy, as she feels herself for

the first time at her goal, where she begins to see that she must

learn not to have goals above her, and that she has played the game

of transition too long. The knowledge transfigures her, and there

rests on her face the gentle weariness of evening that men call

"beauty." Her words after this transfiguration are as a great light

shed over existence: and the highest wish that mortals can reach is

to listen continually to her voice with ears that hear. If a man

think of all that Schopenhauer, for example, must have _heard_ in his

life, he may well say to himself--"The deaf ears, the feeble

understanding and shrunken heart, everything that I call mine,--how I

despise them! Not to be able to fly but only to flutter one's wings!

To look above one's self and have no power to rise! To know the road

that leads to the wide vision of the philosopher, and to reel back

after a few steps! Were there but one day when the great wish might

be fulfilled, how gladly would we pay for it with the rest of life!

To rise as high as any thinker yet into the pure icy air of the

mountain, where there are no mists and veils, and the inner

constitution of things is shown in a stark and piercing clarity! Even

by thinking of this the soul becomes infinitely alone; but were its

wish fulfilled, did its glance once fall straight as a ray of light

on the things below, were shame and anxiety and desire gone for

ever--one could find no words for its state then, for the mystic and

tranquil emotion with which, like the soul of Schopenhauer, it would

look down on the monstrous hieroglyphics of existence and the

petrified doctrines of "becoming"; not as the brooding night, but as

the red and glowing day that streams over the earth. And what a

destiny it is only to know enough of the fixity and happiness of the

philosopher to feel the complete unfixity and unhappiness of the

false philosopher, 'who without hope lives in desire': to know one's

self to be the fruit of a tree that is too much in the shade ever to

ripen, and to see a world of sunshine in front, where one may not

go!"

There were sorrow enough here, if ever, to make such a man envious

and spiteful: but he will turn aside, that he may not destroy his

soul by a vain aspiration; and will discover a new circle of duties.

I can now give an answer to the question whether it be possible to

approach the great ideal of Schopenhauer's man "by any ordinary

activity of our own." In the first place, the new duties are

certainly not those of a hermit; they imply rather a vast community,

held together not by external forms but by a fundamental idea, namely

that of _culture_; though only so far as it can put a single task

before each of us--to bring the philosopher, the artist and the

saint, within and without us, to the light, and to strive thereby for

the completion of Nature. For Nature needs the artist, as she needs

the philosopher, for a metaphysical end, the explanation of herself,

whereby she may have a clear and sharp picture of what she only saw

dimly in the troubled period of transition,--and so may reach

self-consciousness. Goethe, in an arrogant yet profound phrase,

showed how all Nature's attempts only have value in so far as the

artist interprets her stammering words, meets her half-way, and

speaks aloud what she really means. "I have often said, and will

often repeat," he exclaims in one place, "the _causa finalis_ of

natural and human activity is dramatic poetry. Otherwise the stuff is

of no use at all."

Finally, Nature needs the saint. In him the ego has melted away, and

the suffering of his life is, practically, no longer felt as

individual, but as the spring of the deepest sympathy and intimacy

with all living creatures: he sees the wonderful transformation scene

that the comedy of "becoming" never reaches, the attainment, at

length, of the high state of man after which all nature is striving,

that she may be delivered from herself. Without doubt, we all stand

in close relation to him, as well as to the philosopher and the

artist: there are moments, sparks from the clear fire of love, in

whose light we understand the word "I" no longer; there is something

beyond our being that comes, for those moments, to the hither side of

it: and this is why we long in our hearts for a bridge from here to

there. In our ordinary state we can do nothing towards the production

of the new redeemer, and so we hate ourselves in this state with a

hatred that is the root of the pessimism which Schopenhauer had to

teach again to our age, though it is as old as the aspiration after

culture.--Its root, not its flower; the foundation, not the summit;

the beginning of the road, not the end: for we have to learn at some

time to hate something else, more universal than our own personality

with its wretched limitation, its change and its unrest--and this

will be when we shall learn to love something else than we can love

now. When we are ourselves received into that high order of

philosophers, artists and saints, in this life or a reincarnation of

it, a new object for our love and hate will also rise before us. As

it is, we have our task and our circle of duties, our hates and our

loves. For we know that culture requires us to make ready for the

coming of the Schopenhauer man;--and this is the "use" we are to make

of him;--we must know what obstacles there are and strike them from

our path--in fact, wage unceasing war against everything that

hindered our fulfilment, and prevented us from becoming

Schopenhauer's men ourselves.