HTML file produced by David Widger
ESSAYS OF SCHOPENHAUER:
TRANSLATED BY MRS. RUDOLF DIRCKS.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION.
CONTENTS
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE
ON NOISE
ON EDUCATION
ON READING AND BOOKS
THE EMPTINESS OF EXISTENCE
ON WOMEN
THINKING FOR ONESELF
SHORT DIALOGUE ON THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR TRUE BEING BY DEATH
RELIGION--A DIALOGUE
PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS
METAPHYSICS OF LOVE
PHYSIOGNOMY
ON SUICIDE
PRELIMINARY.
When Schopenhauer was asked where he wished to be buried, he answered,
"Anywhere; they will find me;" and the stone that marks his grave at
Frankfort bears merely the inscription "Arthur Schopenhauer," without
even the date of his birth or death. Schopenhauer, the pessimist, had a
sufficiently optimistic conviction that his message to the world would
ultimately be listened to--a conviction that never failed him during a
lifetime of disappointments, of neglect in quarters where perhaps he
would have most cherished appreciation; a conviction that only showed
some signs of being justified a few years before his death. Schopenhauer
was no opportunist; he was not even conciliatory; he never hesitated to
declare his own faith in himself, in his principles, in his philosophy;
he did not ask to be listened to as a matter of courtesy but as a
right--a right for which he would struggle, for which he fought, and
which has in the course of time, it may be admitted, been conceded to
him.
Although everything that Schopenhauer wrote was written more or less as
evidence to support his main philosophical thesis, his unifying
philosophical principle, the essays in this volume have an interest, if
not altogether apart, at least of a sufficiently independent interest to
enable them to be considered on their own merits, without relation to
his main idea. And in dissociating them, if one may do so for a moment
(their author would have scarcely permitted it!), one feels that one
enters a field of criticism in which opinions can scarcely vary. So far
as his philosophy is concerned, this unanimity does not exist; he is one
of the best abused amongst philosophers; he has many times been
explained and condemned exhaustively, and no doubt this will be as many
times repeated. What the trend of his underlying philosophical principal
was, his metaphysical explanation of the world, is indicated in almost
all the following essays, but chiefly in the "Metaphysics of Love," to
which the reader may be referred.
These essays are a valuable criticism of life by a man who had a wide
experience of life, a man of the world, who possessed an almost inspired
faculty of observation. Schopenhauer, of all men, unmistakably observed
life at first hand. There is no academic echo in his utterances; he is
not one of a school; his voice has no formal intonation; it is deep,
full-chested, and rings out its words with all the poignancy of
individual emphasis, without bluster, but with unfailing conviction. He
was for his time, and for his country, an adept at literary form; but he
used it only as a means. Complicated as his sentences occasionally are,
he says many sharp, many brilliant, many epigrammatic things, he has the
manner of the famous essayists, he is paradoxical (how many of his
paradoxes are now truisms!); one fancies at times that one is almost
listening to a creation of Molière, but these fireworks are not merely a
literary display, they are used to illumine what he considers to be the
truth. _Rien n'est beau que le vrai; le vrai seul est aimable_, he
quotes; he was a deliberate and diligent searcher after truth, always
striving to attain the heart of things, to arrive at a knowledge of
first principles. It is, too, not without a sort of grim humour that
this psychological vivisectionist attempts to lay bare the skeleton of
the human mind, to tear away all the charming little sentiments and
hypocrisies which in the course of time become a part and parcel of
human life. A man influenced by such motives, and possessing a frank and
caustic tongue, was not likely to attain any very large share of popular
favour or to be esteemed a companionable sort of person. The fabric of
social life is interwoven with a multitude of delicate evasions, of
small hypocrisies, of matters of tinsel sentiment; social intercourse
would be impossible, if it were not so. There is no sort of social
existence possible for a person who is ingenuous enough to say always
what he thinks, and, on the whole, one may be thankful that there is
not. One naturally enough objects to form the subject of a critical
diagnosis and exposure; one chooses for one's friends the agreeable
hypocrites of life who sustain for one the illusions in which one wishes
to live. The mere conception of a plain-speaking world is calculated to
reduce one to the last degree of despair; it is the conception of the
intolerable. Nevertheless it is good for mankind now and again to have a
plain speaker, a "mar feast," on the scene; a wizard who devises for us
a spectacle of disillusionment, and lets us for a moment see things as
he honestly conceives them to be, and not as we would have them to be.
But in estimating the value of a lesson of this sort, we must not be
carried too far, not be altogether convinced. We may first take into
account the temperament of the teacher; we may ask, is his vision
perfect? We may indulge in a trifling diagnosis on our own account. And
in an examination of this sort we find that Schopenhauer stands the test
pretty well, if not with complete success. It strikes us that he suffers
perhaps a little from a hereditary taint, for we know that there is an
unmistakable predisposition to hypochondria in his family; we know, for
instance, that his paternal grandmother became practically insane
towards the end of her life, that two of her children suffered from some
sort of mental incapacity, and that a third, Schopenhauer's father, was
a man of curious temper and that he probably ended his own life. He
himself would also have attached some importance, in a consideration of
this sort, to the fact, as he might have put it, that his mother, when
she married, acted in the interests of the individual instead of
unconsciously fulfilling the will of the species, and that the offspring
of the union suffered in consequence. Still, taking all these things
into account, and attaching to them what importance they may be worth,
one is amazed at the clearness of his vision, by his vigorous and at
moments subtle perception. If he did not see life whole, what he did see
he saw with his own eyes, and then told us all about it with
unmistakable veracity, and for the most part simply, brilliantly. Too
much importance cannot be attached to this quality of seeing things for
oneself; it is the stamp of a great and original mind; it is the
principal quality of what one calls genius.
In possessing Schopenhauer the world possesses a personality the richer;
a somewhat garrulous personality it may be; a curiously whimsical and
sensitive personality, full of quite ordinary superstitions, of
extravagant vanities, selfish, at times violent, rarely generous; a man
whom during his lifetime nobody quite knew, an isolated creature,
self-absorbed, solely concerned in his elaboration of the explanation of
the world, and possessing subtleties which for the most part escaped the
perception of his fellows; at once a hermit and a boulevardier. His was
essentially a great temperament; his whole life was a life of ideas, an
intellectual life. And his work, the fruit of his life, would seem to be
standing the test of all great work--the test of time. It is not a
little curious that one so little realised in his own day, one so little
lovable and so little loved, should now speak to us from his pages with
something of the force of personal utterance, as if he were actually
with us and as if we knew him, even as we know Charles Lamb and Izaak
Walton, personalities of such a different calibre. And this man whom we
realise does not impress us unfavourably; if he is without charm, he is
surely immensely interesting and attractive; he is so strong in his
intellectual convictions, he is so free from intellectual affectations,
he is such an ingenuous egotist, so naïvely human; he is so mercilessly
honest and independent, and, at times (one may be permitted to think),
so mistaken.
R.D.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
Arthur Schopenhauer was born at No. 117 of the Heiligengeist Strasse, at
Dantzic, on February 22, 1788. His parents on both sides traced their
descent from Dutch ancestry, the great-grandfather of his mother having
occupied some ecclesiastical position at Gorcum. Dr. Gwinner in his
_Life_ does not follow the Dutch ancestry on the father's side, but
merely states that the great-grandfather of Schopenhauer at the
beginning of the eighteenth century rented a farm, the Stuthof, in the
neighbourhood of Dantzic. This ancestor, Andreas Schopenhauer, received
here on one occasion an unexpected visit from Peter the Great and
Catherine, and it is related that there being no stove in the chamber
which the royal pair selected for the night, their host, for the purpose
of heating it, set fire to several small bottles of brandy which had
been emptied on the stone floor. His son Andreas followed in the
footsteps of his father, combining a commercial career with country
pursuits. He died in 1794 at Ohra, where he had purchased an estate, and
to which he had retired to spend his closing years. His wife (the
grandmother of Arthur) survived him for some years, although shortly
after his death she was declared insane and incapable of managing her
affairs. This couple had four sons: the eldest, Michael Andreas, was
weak-minded; the second, Karl Gottfried, was also mentally weak and had
deserted his people for evil companions; the youngest son, Heinrich
Floris, possessed, however, in a considerable degree the qualities which
his brothers lacked. He possessed intelligence, a strong character, and
had great commercial sagacity; at the same time, he took a definite
interest in intellectual pursuits, reading Voltaire, of whom he was more
or less a disciple, and other French authors, possessing a keen
admiration for English political and family life, and furnishing his
house after an English fashion. He was a man of fiery temperament and
his appearance was scarcely prepossessing; he was short and stout; he
had a broad face and turned-up nose, and a large mouth. This was the
father of our philosopher.
When he was thirty-eight, Heinrich Schopenhauer married, on May 16,
1785, Johanna Henriette Trosiener, a young lady of eighteen, and
daughter of a member of the City Council of Dantzic. She was at this
time an attractive, cultivated young person, of a placid disposition,
who seems to have married more because marriage offered her a
comfortable settlement and assured position in life, than from any
passionate affection for her wooer, which, it is just to her to say, she
did not profess. Heinrich Schopenhauer was so much influenced by English
ideas that he desired that his first child should be born in England;
and thither, some two years after their marriage, the pair, after making
a _détour_ on the Continent, arrived. But after spending some weeks in
London Mrs. Schopenhauer was seized with home-sickness, and her husband
acceded to her entreaties to return to Dantzic, where a child, the
future philosopher, was shortly afterwards born. The first five years of
the child's life were spent in the country, partly at the Stuthof which
had formerly belonged to Andreas Schopenhauer, but had recently come
into the possession of his maternal grandfather.
Five years after the birth of his son, Heinrich Schopenhauer, in
consequence of the political crisis, which he seems to have taken keenly
to heart, in the affairs of the Hanseatic town of Dantzic, transferred
his business and his home to Hamburg, where in 1795 a second child,
Adele, was born. Two years later, Heinrich, who intended to train his
son for a business life, took him, with this idea, to Havre, by way of
Paris, where they spent a little time, and left him there with M.
Grégoire, a commercial connection. Arthur remained at Havre for two
years, receiving private instruction with this man's son Anthime, with
whom he struck up a strong friendship, and when he returned to Hamburg
it was found that he remembered but few words of his mother-tongue. Here
he was placed in one of the principal private schools, where he remained
for three years. Both his parents, but especially his mother, cultivated
at this time the society of literary people, and entertained at their
house Klopstock and other notable persons. In the summer following his
return home from Havre he accompanied his parents on a continental tour,
stopping amongst other places at Weimar, where he saw Schiller. His
mother, too, had considerable literary tastes, and a distinct literary
gift which, later, she cultivated to some advantage, and which brought
her in the production of accounts of travel and fiction a not
inconsiderable reputation. It is, therefore, not surprising that
literary tendencies began to show themselves in her son, accompanied by
a growing distaste for the career of commerce which his father wished
him to follow. Heinrich Schopenhauer, although deprecating these
tendencies, considered the question of purchasing a canonry for his son,
but ultimately gave up the idea on the score of expense. He then
proposed to take him on an extended trip to France, where he might meet
his young friend Anthime, and then to England, if he would give up the
idea of a literary calling, and the proposal was accepted.
In the spring of 1803, then, he accompanied his parents to London,
where, after spending some time in sight-seeing, he was placed in the
school of Mr. Lancaster at Wimbledon. Here he remained for three months,
from July to September, laying the foundation of his knowledge of the
English language, while his parents proceeded to Scotland. English
formality, and what he conceived to be English hypocrisy, did not
contrast favourably with his earlier and gayer experiences in France,
and made an extremely unfavourable impression upon his mind; which found
expression in letters to his friends and to his mother.
On returning to Hamburg after this extended excursion abroad,
Schopenhauer was placed in the office of a Hamburg senator called
Jenisch, but he was as little inclined as ever to follow a commercial
career, and secretly shirked his work so that he might pursue his
studies. A little later a somewhat unexplainable calamity occurred. When
Dantzic ceased to be a free city, and Heinrich Schopenhauer at a
considerable cost and monetary sacrifice transferred his business to
Hamburg, the event caused him much bitterness of spirit. At Hamburg his
business seems to have undergone fluctuations. Whether these further
affected his spirit is not sufficiently established, but it is certain,
however, that he developed peculiarities of manner, and that his temper
became more violent. At any rate, one day in April 1805 it was found
that he had either fallen or thrown himself into the canal from an upper
storey of a granary; it was generally concluded that it was a case of
suicide.
Schopenhauer was seventeen at the time of this catastrophe, by which he
was naturally greatly affected. Although by the death of his father the
influence which impelled him to a commercial career was removed, his
veneration for the dead man remained with him through life, and on one
occasion found expression in a curious tribute to his memory in a
dedication (which was not, however, printed) to the second edition of
_Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung._ "That I could make use of and
cultivate in a right direction the powers which nature gave me," he
concludes, "that I could follow my natural impulse and think and work
for countless others without the help of any one; for that I thank thee,
my father, thank thy activity, thy cleverness, thy thrift and care for
the future. Therefore I praise thee, my noble father. And every one who
from my work derives any pleasure, consolation, or instruction shall
hear thy name and know that if Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer had not been
the man he was, Arthur Schopenhauer would have been a hundred times
ruined."
The year succeeding her husband's death, Johanna Schopenhauer removed
with her daughter to Weimar, after having attended to the settlement of
her husband's affairs, which left her in possession of a considerable
income. At Weimar she devoted herself to the pursuit of literature, and
held twice a week a sort of salon, which was attended by Goethe, the two
Schlegels, Wieland, Heinrich Meyer, Grimm, and other literary persons of
note. Her son meanwhile continued for another year at the "dead timber
of the desk," when his mother, acting under the advice of her friend
Fernow, consented, to his great joy, to his following his literary bent.
During the next few years we find Schopenhauer devoting himself
assiduously to acquiring the equipment for a learned career; at first at
the Gymnasium at Gotha, where he penned some satirical verses on one of
the masters, which brought him into some trouble. He removed in
consequence to Weimar, where he pursued his classical studies under the
direction of Franz Passow, at whose house he lodged. Unhappily, during
his sojourn at Weimar his relations with his mother became strained. One
feels that there is a sort of autobiographical interest in his essay on
women, that his view was largely influenced by his relations with his
mother, just as one feels that his particular argument in his essay on
education is largely influenced by the course of his own training.
On his coming of age Schopenhauer was entitled to a share of the
paternal estate, a share which yielded him a yearly income of about
£150. He now entered himself at the University of Göttingen (October
1809), enrolling himself as a student of medicine, and devoting himself
to the study of the natural sciences, mineralogy, anatomy, mathematics,
and history; later, he included logic, physiology, and ethnography. He
had always been passionately devoted to music and found relaxation in
learning to play the flute and guitar. His studies at this time did not
preoccupy him to the extent of isolation; he mixed freely with his
fellows, and reckoned amongst his friends or acquaintances, F.W. Kreise,
Bunsen, and Ernst Schulze. During one vacation he went on an expedition
to Cassel and to the Hartz Mountains. It was about this time, and partly
owing to the influence of Schulze, the author of _Aenesidemus_, and then
a professor at the University of Göttingen, that Schopenhauer came to
realise his vocation as that of a philosopher.
During his holiday at Weimar he called upon Wieland, then seventy-eight
years old, who, probably prompted by Mrs. Schopenhauer, tried to
dissuade him from the vocation which he had chosen. Schopenhauer in
reply said, "Life is a difficult question; I have decided to spend my
life in thinking about it." Then, after the conversation had continued
for some little time, Wieland declared warmly that he thought that he
had chosen rightly. "I understand your nature," he said; "keep to
philosophy." And, later, he told Johanna Schopenhauer that he thought
her son would be a great man some day.
Towards the close of the summer of 1811 Schopenhauer removed to Berlin
and entered the University. He here continued his study of the natural
sciences; he also attended the lectures on the History of Philosophy by
Schleiermacher, and on Greek Literature and Antiquities by F.A. Wolf,
and the lectures on "Facts of Consciousness" and "Theory of Science" by
Fichte, for the last of whom, as we know indeed from frequent references
in his books, he had no little contempt. A year or so later, when the
news of Napoleon's disaster in Russia arrived, the Germans were thrown
into a state of great excitement, and made speedy preparations for war.
Schopenhauer contributed towards equipping volunteers for the army, but
he did not enter active service; indeed, when the result of the battle
of Lützen was known and Berlin seemed to be in danger, he fled for
safety to Dresden and thence to Weimar. A little later we find him at
Rudolstadt, whither he had proceeded in consequence of the recurrence of
differences with his mother, and remained there from June to November
1813, principally engaged in the composition of an essay, "A
Philosophical Treatise on the Fourfold Root of the Principle of
Sufficient Reason," which he offered to the University of Jena as an
exercise to qualify for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and for
which a diploma was granted. He published this essay at his own cost
towards the end of the year, but it seems to have fallen flatly from the
press, although its arguments attracted the attention and the sympathy
of Goethe, who, meeting him on his return to Weimar in November,
discussed with him his own theory of colour. A couple of years before,
Goethe, who was opposed to the Newtonian theory of light, had brought
out his _Farbenlehre_ (colour theory). In Goethe's diary Schopenhauer's
name frequently occurs, and on the 24th November 1813 he wrote to
Knebel: "Young Schopenhauer is a remarkable and interesting man.... I
find him intellectual, but I am undecided about him as far as other
things go." The result of this association with Goethe was his _Ueber
das Sehn und die Farben_ ("On Vision and Colour"), published at Leipzig
in 1816, a copy of which he forwarded to Goethe (who had already seen
the MS.) on the 4th May of that year. A few days later Goethe wrote to
the distinguished scientist, Dr. Seebeck, asking him to read the work.
In Gwinner's _Life_ we find the copy of a letter written in English to
Sir C.L. Eastlake: "In the year 1830, as I was going to publish in Latin
the same treatise which in German accompanies this letter, I went to Dr.
Seebeck of the Berlin Academy, who is universally admitted to be the
first natural philosopher (in the English sense of the word meaning
physiker) of Germany; he is the discoverer of thermo-electricity and of
several physical truths. I questioned him on his opinion on the
controversy between Goethe and Newton; he was extremely cautious and
made me promise that I should not print and publish anything of what he
might say, and at last, being hard pressed by me, he confessed that
indeed Goethe was perfectly right and Newton wrong, but that he had no
business to tell the world so. He has died since, the old coward!"
In May 1814 Schopenhauer removed from Weimar to Dresden, in consequence
of the recurrence of domestic differences with his mother. This was the
final break between the pair, and he did not see her again during the
remaining twenty-four years of her life, although they resumed
correspondence some years before her death. It were futile to attempt to
revive the dead bones of the cause of these unfortunate differences
between Johanna Schopenhauer and her son. It was a question of opposing
temperaments; both and neither were at once to blame. There is no reason
to suppose that Schopenhauer was ever a conciliatory son, or a
companionable person to live with; in fact, there is plenty to show that
he possessed trying and irritating qualities, and that he assumed an
attitude of criticism towards his mother that could not in any
circumstances be agreeable. On the other hand, Anselm Feuerbach in his
_Memoirs_ furnishes us with a scarcely prepossessing picture of Mrs.
Schopenhauer: "Madame Schopenhauer," he writes, "a rich widow. Makes
profession of erudition. Authoress. Prattles much and well,
intelligently; without heart and soul. Self-complacent, eager after
approbation, and constantly smiling to herself. God preserve us from
women whose mind has shot up into mere intellect."
Schopenhauer meanwhile was working out his philosophical system, the
idea of his principal philosophical work. "Under my hands," he wrote in
1813, "and still more in my mind grows a work, a philosophy which will
be an ethics and a metaphysics in one:--two branches which hitherto have
been separated as falsely as man has been divided into soul and body.
The work grows, slowly and gradually aggregating its parts like the
child in the womb. I became aware of one member, one vessel, one part
after another. In other words, I set each sentence down without anxiety
as to how it will fit into the whole; for I know it has all sprung from
a single foundation. It is thus that an organic whole originates, and
that alone will live.... Chance, thou ruler of this sense-world! Let me
live and find peace for yet a few years, for I love my work as the
mother her child. When it is matured and has come to birth, then exact
from me thy duties, taking interest for the postponement. But, if I sink
before the time in this iron age, then grant that these miniature
beginnings, these studies of mine, be given to the world as they are and
for what they are: some day perchance will arise a kindred spirit, who
can frame the members together and 'restore' the fragment of
antiquity."[1]
By March 1817 he had completed the preparatory work of his system, and
began to put the whole thing together; a year later _Die Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung: vier Bücher, nebst einem Anhange, der die Kritik der
Kantischen Philosophie enthält_ ("The World as Will and Idea; four
books, with an appendix containing a criticism on the philosophy of
Kant"). Some delay occurring in the publication, Schopenhauer wrote one
of his characteristically abusive letters to Brockhaus, his publisher,
who retorted "that he must decline all further correspondence with one
whose letters, in their divine coarseness and rusticity, savoured more
of the cabman than of the philosopher," and concluded with a hope that
his fears that the work he was printing would be good for nothing but
waste paper, might not be realised.[2] The work appeared about the end
of December 1818 with 1819 on the title-page. Schopenhauer had meanwhile
proceeded in September to Italy, where he revised the final proofs. So
far as the reception of the work was concerned there was reason to
believe that the fears of Brockhaus would be realised, as, in fact, they
came practically to be. But in the face of this general want of
appreciation, Schopenhauer had some crumbs of consolation. His sister
wrote to him in March (he was then staying at Naples) that Goethe "had
received it with great joy, immediately cut the thick book, and began
_instantly_ to read it. An hour later he sent me a note to say that he
thanked you very much and thought that the whole book was good. He
pointed out the most important passages, read them to us, and was
greatly delighted.... You are the only author whom Goethe has ever read
seriously, it seems to me, and I rejoice." Nevertheless the book did not
sell. Sixteen years later Brockhaus informed Schopenhauer that a large
number of copies had been sold at waste paper price, and that he had
even then a few in stock. Still, during the years 1842-43, Schopenhauer
was contemplating the issue of a second edition and making revisions for
that purpose; when he had completed the work he took it to Brockhaus,
and agreed to leave the question of remuneration open. In the following
year the second edition was issued (500 copies of the first volume, and
750 of the second), and for this the author was to receive no
remuneration. "Not to my contemporaries," says Schopenhauer with fine
conviction in his preface to this edition, "not to my compatriots--to
mankind I commit my now completed work, in the confidence that it will
not be without value for them, even if this should be late recognised,
as is commonly the lot of what is good. For it cannot have been for the
passing generation, engrossed with the delusion of the moment, that my
mind, almost against my will, has uninterruptedly stuck to its work
through the course of a long life. And while the lapse of time has not
been able to make me doubt the worth of my work, neither has the lack of
sympathy; for I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the
absurd and senseless, stand in universal admiration and honour, and I
bethought myself that if it were not the case, those who are capable of
recognising the genuine and right are so rare that we may look for them
in vain for some twenty years, then those who are capable of producing
it could not be so few that their works afterwards form an exception to
the perishableness of earthly things; and thus would be lost the
reviving prospect of posterity which every one who sets before himself a
high aim requires to strengthen him."[3]
When Schopenhauer started for Italy Goethe had provided him with a
letter of introduction to Lord Byron, who was then staying at Venice,
but Schopenhauer never made use of the letter; he said that he hadn't
the courage to present himself. "Do you know," he says in a letter,
"three great pessimists were in Italy at the same time--Byron, Leopardi,
and myself! And yet not one of us has made the acquaintance of the
other." He remained in Italy until June 1819, when he proceeded to
Milan, where he received distressing news from his sister to the effect
that a Dantzic firm, in which she and her mother had invested all their
capital, and in which he himself had invested a little, had become
bankrupt. Schopenhauer immediately proposed to share his own income with
them. But later, when the defaulting firm offered to its creditors a
composition of thirty per cent, Schopenhauer would accept nothing less
than seventy per cent in the case of immediate payment, or the whole if
the payment were deferred; and he was so indignant at his mother and
sister falling in with the arrangement of the debtors, that he did not
correspond with them again for eleven years. With reference to this
affair he wrote: "I can imagine that from your point of view my
behaviour may seem hard and unfair. That is a mere illusion which
disappears as soon as you reflect that all I want is merely not to have
taken from me what is most rightly and incontestably mine, what,
moreover, my whole happiness, my freedom, my learned leisure depend
upon;--a blessing which in this world people like me enjoy so rarely
that it would be almost as unconscientious as cowardly not to defend it
to the uttermost and maintain it by every exertion. You say, perhaps,
that if all your creditors were of this way of thinking, I too should
come badly off. But if all men thought as I do, there would be much more
thinking done, and in that case probably there would be neither
bankruptcies, nor wars, nor gaming tables."[4]
In July 1819, when he was at Heidelberg, the idea occurred to him of
turning university lecturer, and took practical shape the following
summer, when he delivered a course of lectures on philosophy at the
Berlin University. But the experiment was not a success; the course was
not completed through the want of attendance, while Hegel at the same
time and place was lecturing to a crowded and enthusiastic audience.
This failure embittered him, and during the next few years there is
little of any moment in his life to record. There was one incident,
however, to which his detractors would seem to have attached more
importance than it was worth, but which must have been sufficiently
disturbing to Schopenhauer--we refer to the Marquet affair. It appears
on his returning home one day he found three women gossiping outside his
door, one of whom was a seamstress who occupied another room in the
house. Their presence irritated Schopenhauer (whose sensitiveness in
such matters may be estimated from his essay "On Noise"), who, finding
them occupying the same position on another occasion, requested them to
go away, but the seamstress replied that she was an honest person and
refused to move. Schopenhauer disappeared into his apartments and
returned with a stick. According to his own account, he offered his arm
to the woman in order to take her out; but she would not accept it, and
remained where she was. He then threatened to put her out, and carried
his threat into execution by seizing her round the waist and putting her
out. She screamed, and attempted to return. Schopenhauer now pushed her
out; the woman fell, and raised the whole house. This woman, Caroline
Luise Marquet, brought an action against him for damages, alleging that
he had kicked and beaten her. Schopenhauer defended his own case, with
the result that the action was dismissed. The woman appealed, and
Schopenhauer, who was contemplating going to Switzerland, did not alter
his plans, so that the appeal was heard during his absence, the judgment
reversed, and he was mulcted in a fine of twenty thalers. But the
unfortunate business did not end here. Schopenhauer proceeded from
Switzerland to Italy, and did not return to Berlin until May 1825.
Caroline Marquet renewed her complaints before the courts, stating that
his ill-usage had occasioned a fever through which she had lost the
power of one of her arms, that her whole system was entirely shaken, and
demanding a monthly allowance as compensation. She won her case; the
defendant had to pay three hundred thalers in costs and contribute sixty
thalers a year to her maintenance while she lived. Schopenhauer on
returning to Berlin did what he could to get the judgment reversed, but
unsuccessfully. The woman lived for twenty years; he inscribed on her
death certificate, "_Obit anus, obit onus"_
The idea of marriage seems to have more or less possessed Schopenhauer
about this time, but he could not finally determine to take the step.
There is sufficient to show in the following essays in what light he
regarded women. Marriage was a debt, he said, contracted in youth and
paid off in old age. Married people have the whole burden of life to
bear, while the unmarried have only half, was a characteristically
selfish apothegm. Had not all the true philosophers been
celibates--Descartes, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Kant? The
classic writers were of course not to be considered, because with them
woman occupied a subordinate position. Had not all the great poets
married, and with disastrous consequences? Plainly, Schopenhauer was not
the person to sacrifice the individual to the will of the species.
In August 1831 he made a fortuitous expedition to
Frankfort-on-the-Main--an expedition partly prompted by the outbreak of
cholera at Berlin at the time, and partly by the portent of a dream (he
was credulous in such matters) which at the beginning of the year had
intimated his death. Here, however, he practically remained until his
death, leading a quiet, mechanically regular life and devoting his
thoughts to the development of his philosophic ideas, isolated at first,
but as time went on enjoying somewhat greedily the success which had
been denied him in his earlier days. In February 1839 he had a moment of
elation when he heard from the Scientific Society of Drontheim that he
had won the prize for the best essay on the question, "Whether free will
could be proved from the evidence of consciousness," and that he had
been elected a member of the Society; and a corresponding moment of
despondency when he was informed by the Royal Danish Academy of the
Sciences at Copenhagen, in a similar competition, that his essay on
"Whether the source and foundation of ethics was to be sought in an
intuitive moral idea, and in the analysis of other derivative moral
conceptions, or in some other principle of knowledge," had failed,
partly on the ground of the want of respect which it showed to the
opinions of the chief philosophers. He published these essays in 1841
under the title of "The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics," and ten
years later _Parerga und Paralipomena_ the composition of which had
engaged his attention for five or six years. The latter work, which
proved to be his most popular, was refused by three publishers, and when
eventually it was accepted by Hayn of Berlin, the author only received
ten free copies of his work as payment. It is from this book that all
except one of the following essays have been selected; the exception is
"The Metaphysics of Love," which appears in the supplement of the third
book of his principal work. The second edition of _Die Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung_ appeared in 1844, and was received with growing
appreciation. Hitherto he had been chiefly known in Frankfort as the son
of the celebrated Johanna Schopenhauer; now he came to have a following
which, if at first small in numbers, were sufficiently enthusiastic, and
proved, indeed, so far as his reputation was concerned, helpful. Artists
painted his portrait; a bust of him was made by Elizabeth Ney. In the
April number of the _Westminster Review_ for 1853 John Oxenford, in an
article entitled "Iconoclasm in German Philosophy," heralded in England
his recognition as a writer and thinker; three years later Saint-René
Taillandier, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, did a similar service for
him in France. One of his most enthusiastic admirers was Richard Wagner,
who in 1854 sent him a copy of his _Der Ring der Nibelungen_, with the
inscription "In admiration and gratitude." The Philosophical Faculty of
the University of Leipzic offered a prize for an exposition and
criticism of his philosophical system. Two Frenchmen, M. Foucher de
Careil and M. Challemel Lacour, who visited Schopenhauer during his last
days, have given an account of their impressions of the interview, the
latter in an article entitled, "Un Bouddhiste Contemporain en
Allemagne," which appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for March
15th, 1870. M. Foucher de Careil gives a charming picture of him:--"Quand je le vis, pour la première fois, en 1859, à la table de
l'hôtel d'Angleterre, à Francfort, c'était déjà un vieillard, à
l'oeil d'un bleu vif et limpide, à la lèvre mince et légèrement
sarcastique, autour de laquelle errait un fin sourire, et dont le
vaste front, estompé de deux touffes de cheveux blancs sur les
côtés, relevait d'un cachet de noblesse et de distinction la
physionomie petillante d'esprit et de malice. Les habits, son jabot
de dentelle, sa cravate blanche rappelaient un vieillard de la fin
du règne de Louis XV; ses manières étaient celles d'un homme de
bonne compagnie. Habituellement réservé et d'un naturel craintif
jusqu'à la méfiance, il ne se livrait qu'avec ses intimes ou les
étrangers de passage à Francfort. Ses mouvements étaient vifs et
devenaient d'une pétulance extraordinaire dans la conversation; il
fuyait les discussions et les vains combats de paroles, mais c'était
pour mieux jouir du charme d'une causerie intime. Il possédait et
parlait avec une égale perfection quatre langues: le français,
l'anglais, l'allemand, l'italien et passablement l'espagnol. Quand
il causait, la verve du vieillard brodait sur le canevas un peu
lourd de l'allemand ses brilliantes arabesques latines, grecques,
françaises, anglaises, italiennes. C'était un entrain, une précision
et des sailles, une richesse de citations, une exactitude de détails
qui faisait couler les heures; et quelquefois le petit cercle de ses
intimes l'écoutait jusqu'à minuit, sans qu'un moment de fatigue se
fût peint sur ses traits ou que le feu de son regard se fût un
instant amorti. Sa parole nette et accentuée captivait l'auditoire:
elle peignait et analysait tout ensemble; une sensibilité délicate
en augmentait le feu; elle était exacte et précise sur toutes sortes
de sujets."
Schopenhauer died on the 20th September 1860, in his seventy-third year,
peacefully, alone as he had lived, but not without warning. One day in
April, taking his usual brisk walk after dinner, he suffered from
palpitation of the heart, he could scarcely breathe. These symptoms
developed during the next few months, and Dr. Gwinner advised him to
discontinue his cold baths and to breakfast in bed; but Schopenhauer,
notwithstanding his early medical training, was little inclined to
follow medical advice. To Dr. Gwinner, on the evening of the 18th
September, when he expressed a hope that he might be able to go to
Italy, he said that it would be a pity if he died now, as he wished to
make several important additions to his _Parerga_; he spoke about his
works and of the warm recognition with which they had been welcomed in
the most remote places. Dr. Gwinner had never before found him so eager
and gentle, and left him reluctantly, without, however, the least
premonition that he had seen him for the last time. On the second
morning after this interview Schopenhauer got up as usual, and had his
cold bath and breakfast. His servant had opened the window to let in the
morning air and had then left him. A little later Dr. Gwinner arrived
and found him reclining in a corner of the sofa; his face wore its
customary expression; there was no sign of there having been any
struggle with death. There had been no struggle with death; he had died,
as he had hoped he would die, painlessly, easily.
In preparing the above notice the writer has to acknowledge her
indebtedness to Dr. Gwinner's _Life_ and Professor Wallace's little work
on the same subject, as well as to the few other authorities that have
been available.--THE TRANSLATOR.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Wallace's _Life_, pp. 95, 96.
[2] Wallace, p. 108.
[3] Haldane and Kemp's _The World as Will and Idea_.
[4] Wallace, p. 145.
ESSAYS OF SCHOPENHAUER.
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE.
There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the
subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. The first kind
have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating,
while the second kind need money and consequently write for money. They
think in order to write, and they may be recognised by their spinning
out their thoughts to the greatest possible length, and also by the way
they work out their thoughts, which are half-true, perverse, forced, and
vacillating; then also by their love of evasion, so that they may seem
what they are not; and this is why their writing is lacking in
definiteness and clearness.
Consequently, it is soon recognised that they write for the sake of
filling up the paper, and this is the case sometimes with the best
authors; for example, in parts of Lessing's _Dramaturgie_, and even in
many of Jean Paul's romances. As soon as this is perceived the book
should be thrown away, for time is precious. As a matter of fact, the
author is cheating the reader as soon as he writes for the sake of
filling up paper; because his pretext for writing is that he has
something to impart. Writing for money and preservation of copyright
are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. It is only the man who writes
absolutely for the sake of the subject that writes anything worth
writing. What an inestimable advantage it would be, if, in every branch
of literature, there existed only a few but excellent books! This can
never come to pass so long as money is to be made by writing. It seems
as if money lay under a curse, for every author deteriorates directly he
writes in any way for the sake of money. The best works of great men all
come from the time when they had to write either for nothing or for very
little pay. This is confirmed by the Spanish proverb: _honra y provecho
no caben en un saco_ (Honour and money are not to be found in the same
purse). The deplorable condition of the literature of to-day, both in
Germany and other countries, is due to the fact that books are written
for the sake of earning money. Every one who is in want of money sits
down and writes a book, and the public is stupid enough to buy it. The
secondary effect of this is the ruin of language.
A great number of bad authors eke out their existence entirely by the
foolishness of the public, which only will read what has just been
printed. I refer to journalists, who have been appropriately so-called.
In other words, it would be "day labourer."
* * * * *
Again, it may be said that there are three kinds of authors. In the
first place, there are those who write without thinking. They write from
memory, from reminiscences, or even direct from other people's books.
This class is the most numerous. In the second, those who think whilst
they are writing. They think in order to write; and they are numerous.
In the third place, there are those who have thought before they begin
to write. They write solely because they have thought; and they are
rare.
Authors of the second class, who postpone their thinking until they
begin to write, are like a sportsman who goes out at random--he is not
likely to bring home very much. While the writing of an author of the
third, the rare class, is like a chase where the game has been captured
beforehand and cooped up in some enclosure from which it is afterwards
set free, so many at a time, into another enclosure, where it is not
possible for it to escape, and the sportsman has now nothing to do but
to aim and fire--that is to say, put his thoughts on paper. This is the
kind of sport which yields something.
But although the number of those authors who really and seriously think
before they write is small, only extremely few of them think about _the
subject itself_; the rest think only about the books written on this
subject, and what has been said by others upon it, I mean. In order to
think, they must have the more direct and powerful incentive of other
people's thoughts. These become their next theme, and therefore they
always remain under their influence and are never, strictly speaking,
original. On the contrary, the former are roused to thought through the
_subject itself_, hence their thinking is directed immediately to it. It
is only among them that we find the authors whose names become immortal.
Let it be understood that I am speaking here of writers of the higher
branches of literature, and not of writers on the method of distilling
brandy.
It is only the writer who takes the material on which he writes direct
out of his own head that is worth reading. Book manufacturers,
compilers, and the ordinary history writers, and others like them, take
their material straight out of books; it passes into their fingers
without its having paid transit duty or undergone inspection when it was
in their heads, to say nothing of elaboration. (How learned many a man
would be if he knew everything that was in his own books!) Hence their
talk is often of such a vague nature that one racks one's brains in vain
to understand of _what_ they are really thinking. They are not thinking
at all. The book from which they copy is sometimes composed in the same
way: so that writing of this kind is like a plaster cast of a cast of a
cast, and so on, until finally all that is left is a scarcely
recognisable outline of the face of Antinous. Therefore, compilations
should be read as seldom as possible: it is difficult to avoid them
entirely, since compendia, which contain in a small space knowledge that
has been collected in the course of several centuries, are included in
compilations.