[Frontispiece: Schopenhauer]
SCHOPENHAUER
BY MARGRIETA BEER, M.A.
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGH
NEW YORK: DODGE PUBLISHING CO.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
INTRODUCTION
I. SCHOPENHAUER'S LIFE
II. PESSIMISM
III. ART
IV. VIRTUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
{7}
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
INTRODUCTION
Schopenhauer differs from most other philosophers in that he has
influenced not only the development of the history of thought, the
course along which modern philosophy has proceeded, but in that his
views have been welcomed as an inspiration, accepted almost in the
spirit of a religious faith by workers in quite other departments of
life.
No philosopher has so directly touched and influenced the great art
movements of modern times. It is now nearly one hundred years since
the publication of his greatest work, and his philosophy is a more
potent and vitalising force to-day than in his own lifetime. It has
been a source of inspiration to artists and has directly stimulated
their creative activity, probably more than any other abstract system
has ever done.
Poetry has always been influenced subtly by philosophy. Spenser and
Shelley are imbued through and through with the doctrines of Plato.
Goethe wrote some of his finest work under the spell of Spinoza, and
some of Wordsworth's deepest experiences were interpreted to him
through the ideas of Kant. It is to all artists, but especially to
musicians, that Schopenhauer makes his most intimate appeal. For in
his system music plays a strangely important part, above and apart {8}
from all the other arts. In analysing its spiritual character, he
endows it with mystic significance. One famous instance of this
influence is that of Wagner. His acquaintance with Schopenhauer's
philosophy marked a turning-point in his artistic life. It gave a
tremendous stimulus to his musical productivity, and while under its
influence he composed his greatest works.
Schopenhauer's system expresses, according to his own statement, only a
single thought, viewed in different aspects. He considers it from the
metaphysical, æsthetic, and ethical points of view. This fundamental
thought, which lies at the root of his entire philosophy, is concerned
with the significance of the will. The will alone gives the key to the
understanding of man's existence. Every force in nature is to be
regarded as will, and the inner reality of the universe is to be found
only in will.
While it is especially to those who are concerned with the problems
arising out of the function and significance of art that Schopenhauer
offers such fruitful and fascinating suggestions, the other aspects of
his system offer solutions in the sphere of ethics and metaphysics of
almost equally vital importance. His insistence on the significance of
instinct and intuition in all the lower and higher forms of life is of
great importance in the history of philosophy. It is an aspect of the
subject which until later times had been strangely neglected. This
prominence which is given to instinct and intuition, is connected
directly with his philosophy of the will.
Schopenhauer, unlike most philosophers, has always been read and
appreciated by the general reader and student of life, as distinguished
from the specialised {9} student of philosophy. His fundamental
attitude towards philosophy explains this to a great extent.
Notwithstanding his marked leaning towards mysticism, he brought
philosophy down to earth, and into relation with, the actual facts of
life. He exchanged abstractions for realities. Philosophy had always
been far too much concerned, he maintained, with abstract conceptions,
and the philosopher had tended too exclusively to be a mere man of
books and learning. The true philosopher, on the contrary, should be a
guide to fine living as well as to high thinking.
Philosophy should express the real life of things. But the deepest
things in life are not known by way of the intellect, but are lived and
felt. The profoundest truths of life we know intuitively and directly,
with a deeper certainty than the understanding can give.
That Schopenhauer has a wider public than have most philosophers is due
partly to his style. He writes in language so singularly clear and
lucid, that it can be followed easily by the general reader, not
specially trained in a technical philosophical vocabulary. Of all
German philosophers he is the greatest from a literary point of view.
"The true philosopher," he writes, "will always seek after light and
clearness, and will endeavour to resemble a Swiss lake, which through
its peacefulness is able to unite great depth with great clearness, the
depth revealing itself precisely by the clearness, rather than a
turbid, impetuous mountain torrent." Philosophers have not always
given much heed to this counsel of perfection. Obscurity of expression
is merely the cloak in which men seek to hide their poverty of thought
and triteness of mind. "Everyone," says Schopenhauer, "who possesses a
beautiful and rich mind will always express himself in the most {10}
natural, direct, and simple way, concerned to communicate his thoughts
to others and thus relieve the loneliness that he must feel in such a
world as this."
Schopenhauer is a temperamental pessimist. In words of glowing and
passionate eloquence he sets out to prove that all life is essentially
sorrow. From his earliest days he had been abnormally sensitive to the
misery that lies beneath the surface of life. Pain is essential to
life and cannot be evaded. If it can find entrance in no other form,
then it comes in the sad, grey garments of tedium and ennui.
The purest joy in life is that which lifts us out of our daily
existence, and transforms us into disinterested spectators of it. This
"divine release from the common ways of men" can only be found through
art. But even this release, which is accessible only to the few,
increases the capacity for suffering.
The final and only permanent solution of life is to be found in the
life of the saint. True morality passes through virtue, which is
rooted in sympathy, into asceticism. Art gives a marvellous
consolation in life, but renunciation and self-surrender offer a
complete release from the terrors and evils of existence. The veil of
Mâyâ--the web of illusion--is lifted from man's eyes. He now shudders
at the pleasures which recognise the assertion of life, and attains to
the state of voluntary renunciation, resignation, and true
indifference. Buddhism, Schopenhauer maintained, comes nearest of all
religions to expressing this truth. It is here that he shows how
profoundly Indian philosophy and religion had influenced him.
Throughout his life Schopenhauer was aggressively hostile towards all
contemporary philosophers. To some extent, no doubt, his own failure
to obtain academic {11} recognition embittered him. But partly his
attitude may be explained by the complete difference of method between
them. Schopenhauer cares nothing at all about method. To Hegel and
his contemporaries method was all-important. The historical method was
the pathway which was followed with most enthusiasm at the time. It is
especially for the historical method that Schopenhauer has the frankest
contempt. Hegel and others were attempting to interpret present
reality through history, seeking to show that through the slow process
of history, unfolding itself in time, are revealed the organic
principles which underlie the whole of life. Schopenhauer attaches
practically no value to history as a highroad for philosophical
inquiry. This way, he says, lie merely the dry bones of archæology and
antiquarianism. To examine things historically is to look along a
horizontal line. To think philosophically is to look along a vertical
line. The latter is the rational and the more profound point of view.
"What history narrates is in fact only the long, heavy, and confused
dream of humanity." It is our inmost consciousness which is the real
concern of the philosopher. "The true philosophy of history," he says,
"consists in the insight into the causes of all these endless changes
and their confusion. We have always before us the same even,
unchanging nature, which to-day acts in the same way as yesterday.
Thus it ought to recognise the identical in all events, in ancient as
in modern times, in the East as in the West, and in spite of all
difference in special circumstances, of costume and of custom, to see
everywhere the same humanity. If one has read Herodotus, then in a
philosophical regard one has read enough history. For everything is
already there that makes up the subsequent history of the world."
{12}
That which is significant in itself, not in its relations, is to be
found far more profoundly and distinctly in poetry than in history.
There is, therefore, far more real, inner truth in poetry than in
history. Aristotle held the same view, maintaining that poetry reveals
a higher truth than history, for it strives to express the universal.
"Poetry," he says, "is a more philosophical, and a higher thing than
history."
In Schopenhauer's view, the true philosopher is the genius. His
penetrative imagination will see farther and deeper than the learning
of the mere scholar. The genius is a clear mirror of the inner nature
of the universe. To him knowledge is the sun which reveals the world.
His work may be regarded as an inspiration, as an interpretation of the
spirit of beauty in art. He has been endowed by nature with a special
faculty of inner vision, and uses his power to open the eyes of
ordinary men. It is the genius who knows the inner nature of things,
just as in Plato true philosophers are defined as "the lovers of the
vision of truth, who are able to distinguish the idea from the objects
which participate in the idea, and whose eyes are ever directed towards
fixed and immutable principles." It is the genius, says Schopenhauer,
who interprets his vision to the rest of mankind. He enables us to see
the world through his eyes.
There was a wide difference, too, between Schopenhauer and other
contemporary philosophers, in their attitude towards religion.
Schopenhauer's freedom from academic fetters enabled him to steer an
independent way. The German university professor was almost always
dominated by the need for reconciling his philosophical theories with a
theological creed. At times to square accounts between the two
involved {13} considerable ingenuity, as in the case of Kant. To
Schopenhauer, to whom orthodox religion had always been a mere form,
such attempts savoured of hypocrisy. Hence he always speaks
slightingly of "philosophy-professors," and throughout his writings he
makes bitter attacks upon them. Hegel's work is described as
three-fourths utter absurdity, and one quarter as paradox, and he
himself alluded to as "that intellectual Caliban." Plato's contempt
for the sophists stands on very much the same plane of thought.
In spite of this attitude there is much in Schopenhauer's system, which
is closely akin to Christianity on its mystical side. In his ethical
theory he shows extraordinary points of agreement with the mediæval
mystics. Materialism was utterly alien to his spirit. Materialists,
he said, possess neither humanities nor culture, and their point of
view filled him with the Olympian laughter of the gods. He always
maintained that his theory of pessimism was more truly Christian, and
more closely in accord with the spirit of primitive Christianity than
the shallow optimism which crept into the later developments of that
system. Its ascetic spirit he considered the kernel of Christianity.
Protestantism represented for him a falling away from the earlier and
purer form, and a transition to shallow rationalism.
His thought was much influenced by ancient Indian philosophy, and
especially by Buddhism. The Upanishads had been published in Germany
in 1801 in a Latin translation from a Persian version of the Sanscrit
original. In these treatises are set forth the general system of
mystical pantheism, which grew out of the more theosophic elements of
the Vedas. In reading them Schopenhauer immediately acknowledged a
kindred spirit. In speaking of this work he says, "How {14} does
everyone who by diligent reading has familiarised himself with this
incomparable book, feel himself stirred to the innermost by that
spirit. The mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted
superstition, and all philosophy servile to that superstition. It is
the most profitable and the most elevating reading which is possible in
the world. It has been the consolation of my life, and will be the
consolation of my death."
{15}
CHAPTER I
SCHOPENHAUER'S LIFE
Arthur Schopenhauer led the outwardly uneventful life of a scholar and
a thinker, taking no part in public affairs. The great movements in
European history, through which he lived, left him untroubled and
unmoved in his scholar's seclusion. There is little therefore to
chronicle with regard to the outer history of his life. It is the more
easy to escape the criticism of Schopenhauer himself, who says that
"those who, instead of studying the thoughts of a philosopher, make
themselves acquainted with his life and history, are like people who
instead of occupying themselves with a picture, are rather occupied
with its frame, reflecting on the taste of its carving and the nature
of its gilding."
The little that there is to tell is, however, of great significance
with regard to the development of his thought. For of no philosopher
can it be more truly said than of Schopenhauer, that his thought is the
expression of his character.
Schopenhauer was born at Dantzig on February 22, 1788. He traced his
descent through both parents to Dutch ancestors. The family had
settled at Dantzig in the course of commerce. For several generations
the head of the family had combined the career of a merchant with
landed pursuits. Schopenhauer's great-grandfather, Andreas
Schopenhauer, leased one of the {16} large farms belonging to the
municipality, while following the business of a merchant. His son
Andreas acquired property near Dantzig, and there the father of the
philosopher, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, was born. Some mental
weakness seems to have been inherited. The eldest son of Andreas was
an imbecile from his youth, and the other children, with the exception
of Schopenhauer's father, all had some curious mental or moral twist.
Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, however, was a man of strong intelligence
and character. He followed a merchant's career with great success,
raising his firm to the first position in the town. He was a disciple
of the school of Voltaire, read French and English literature, and had
a keen admiration for English life and institutions. His wife,
Johanna, belonged, too, to one of the leading families of Dantzig. She
had been educated on broader lines than was usual for girls at the
time, and had a love for art and letters which extended her interests
beyond the domestic concerns of her home. Later on, during her
widowhood, these were to find a wider field and opportunity, and she
became a well-known authoress in the Germany of her day. She married
in 1785, at the age of eighteen, being twenty years younger than her
husband. The marriage was an unhappy one, owing to differences of
temperament. There were two children of the marriage. They suffered
for the incompatibilities of their parents. Both were burdened with
abnormally strong desires for the pleasures of life, together with an
extraordinary capacity for suffering.
Arthur, the future philosopher, was the first child of the marriage.
He was given the name of Arthur to satisfy the cosmopolitanism of his
father, the name being spelt alike in several languages. His earliest
{17} years were spent at the country house near Dantzig, or at the
farm, between the sea and the pine-woods, which had been rented many
years before by his great-grandfather.
In 1793, when Schopenhauer was five years old, the family migrated to
Hamburg. The "free city" of Dantzig, which had a constitution of its
own, was annexed by Prussia in 1793, at the second partition of Poland,
and Heinrich Schopenhauer was too stern a republican to adapt himself
to the new rule. He carried on his business in Hamburg for the next
twelve years, but never became a naturalised citizen.
He had resolved that his son should follow the family career of a
merchant, and his education was planned accordingly on those lines. He
was taken to France in 1797, and left at Havre for two years. For the
next three years he attended a private school at Hamburg. During this
time, discontent with his father's plans for his future was gradually
ripening within him. To reconcile him, he was promised a trip to
France and England, on the condition that he promised to give up his
own desires and ambitions, and to be loyal to his father's wishes. The
prospect of the journey was too alluring, and he gave the required
promise. After six weeks had been spent in London, his parents left
him at a boarding-school at Wimbledon. In letters to his mother, he
complains of the mechanical instruction, the dreary Sunday services,
and the tedious routine of the school. She, in reply, warns him not to
give way to bombast and empty pathos.
He became proficient in English, and always held English character and
intelligence in admiration, although he was impressed by the prevalent
hypocrisy and the oppressive pietism of the time. He was busy {18}
already recording his impressions, describing characteristically the
feelings and ideas awakened in him rather than the actual facts and
events. The travellers returned through France, from Geneva to Vienna,
and thence to Berlin.
For about four months Schopenhauer now worked in a Dantzig office,
trying to acquire the rudiments of a business training. When almost
seventeen, he entered the employment of a firm in Hamburg. He himself
has recorded that there never was a worse clerk in a merchant's office.
In his leisure, and during office hours whenever possible, he was
reading voraciously.
In 1805 his father died, whether by accident or by his own hand remains
uncertain. For two years longer Schopenhauer stuck to his hated task,
out of loyalty to his father, and the promise made him some years
earlier. But at last he could stifle his ambitions and yearnings
towards a purely intellectual life no longer, and he obtained his
mother's consent to leave his office, and to begin preparation for a
learned career.
His mother meanwhile, with her daughter Adèle, had left Hamburg and
settled at Weimar, at that time the intellectual centre of Germany.
Goethe was here the sun round which the lesser lights of the artistic
and intellectual world revolved. At the age of forty, Johanna
Schopenhauer had entered on a new life, and was finding scope and free
development for untried capabilities. She played a prominent part in
the social life of the place, and her receptions were remarkable for
the circle she gathered round her. Goethe himself was a frequent
visitor there. She also took part in the theatrical performances,
which were so conspicuous a feature of the life at Weimar. With help
and encouragement from Fernow, a distinguished scholar and {19} art
critic, she began to write, and published with considerable popular
success travel sketches, art biographies, and novels. Her daughter, in
describing their life at Weimar, tells how her mother experienced ever
fresh delight in intercourse with the famous men living there. "She
was liked, her society was agreeable. Her pleasing manners made her
house a centre of intellectual activity, where everyone felt at home,
and freely contributed the best he had to bring." Besides Goethe,
Schlegel, Grimm, Wieland and others were frequent guests under her
roof. Freed from his hated bondage, Schopenhauer now left Hamburg and
entered the gymnasium, or grammar school, at Gotha, but a lampoon on
one of the masters was so resented that he was obliged to leave. He
then came to Weimar, at his mother's suggestion, and worked at classics
in the house of a well-known scholar, who had a real enthusiasm for all
things Greek. Something of his spirit he communicated to his pupil,
and the passion for Greek art and thought grew into a moulding
principle in Schopenhauer's views of life and religion. At the same
time that he was entering into the spirit of classical literature, he
was cultivating his musical ability, and thus feeling his way towards a
full and intense understanding of the art, which entered later with
such significance into the development of his philosophy. He was
striving to realise an ideal of the fullest and most complete culture,
in which not only the life of thought, but also the life of art should
find consummate satisfaction.
The estrangement between his mother and himself began to widen now that
they were thrown constantly together. By arrangement, he dined daily
with her, and came to her receptions. But Schopenhauer was {20} too
uncontrolled in his temper, and too uncompromising in his egoism to
make an agreeable companion. His mother, driven to write to him,
asserts that his constant grumbling, gloomy looks, and intolerant
dogmatism depress her. It is necessary to her happiness to know that
he is happy, but not necessary that she should be a witness to it.
Therefore, if they are to agree they must consent to live apart. Both
mother and son were bent on self-development, and in character were too
dissimilar to understand each other. Schopenhauer was jealous,
uncontrolled in his moods, and boorish in his manners. That
all-consuming egoism, which all his life spoiled his relations with
everyone with whom he came in contact, made a congenial family life
impossible. He resented his mother's freedom and independence, and
insulted her friends. In a way that is very characteristic of him, he
generalises from his own personal experience, and in his views on women
we find reflected all the bitterness which had grown round the
relations between himself and his mother.
In 1809 he attained his majority, and received his share of his
father's fortune, amounting to about £150 a year. He was now
independent, and could pursue the career he had marked out for himself.
He valued all his life the liberty which this competency secured him.
A draft dedication, intended for the second edition of _The World as
Will and Idea_, was addressed "to the _manes_ of my father. Noble,
beneficent spirit! to whom I owe everything that I am.... As thou
didst bring into the world a son such as I am, thou didst also make
provision that in a world like this, such a son should be able to
subsist and to develop himself.... In my mind the tendency to its only
proper vocation was too decidedly implanted to let me {21} do violence
to my nature, and so to subjugate it that, recking nought of existence
in general, and active only for my personal existence, it should find
its sole task in procuring daily bread.... Thou seemest to have
foreseen that thy son, thou proud republican, could not possess the
talent to compete in cringing before ministers and councillors,
Mæcenases, and their advisers, basely to beg for the hard-earned piece
of bread, or to flatter self-conceited commonplaceness, and humbly join
himself to the eulogistic retinue of bungling charlatans.... That I
could expand the forces nature gave me and apply them to their destined
purpose, that I could follow my natural instinct and think and work for
beings without number, while no one does anything for me, for that I
thank thee, my father, thank thy activity, prudence, thrift, and
provision for the future."
In 1809 he entered the University of Göttingen as a student of
medicine. In his second year he changed his course to philosophy.
Wieland, the poet, on the occasion of a visit from Schopenhauer, tried
to dissuade him from philosophy as a career. The reply was, "Life is a
ticklish business. I have decided to spend it in reflecting on it."
In 1811 Schopenhauer left Göttingen, and entered the University of
Berlin. Here, too, he gave special attention to natural science.
Throughout his notebooks are scattered critical remarks on his teachers
and their lectures. Fichte especially was a butt for his sarcasms.
Against a statement of Schleiermacher's, that "No man can be a
philosopher without being religious," he writes, "No man who is
religious takes to philosophy: he does not need it."
The Napoleonic wars were at this time disorganising {22} the whole of
Europe. Berlin was in the hands of a French garrison. But after the
disastrous campaign of Napoleon in Russia, the entire nation rose
against the invader. University classes were broken up. Fichte stayed
behind to nurse the wounded, and died next year at his post.
Schopenhauer, a prey to fears, which tormented him all his life, fled
for safety to Dresden. He settled finally at Rudolstadt, and wrote
there an essay, to qualify for the degree of doctor of philosophy at
Jena. This he obtained, and his essay was published as _A
Philosophical Treatise on the Four-fold Root of the Principle of
Sufficient Reason_. This work he describes in his later books as a
preliminary part of his system, which must be studied if the remainder
is to be understood. It is written entirely under the influence of
Kant. The title refers to the four branches of knowledge: physical
science, mathematics, logic, and ethics.
After the publication of his book, Schopenhauer returned to Weimar, and
stayed for a few months with his mother. The experiment resulted in
complete estrangement. He was overbearing and dogmatic, insulting his
mother's friends, and censorious towards herself. She wrote to him
again, to avoid an unpleasant personal interview, and complained of his
contemptuous bearing and peremptory manner. He left Weimar and never
saw his mother again, although she lived for twenty-four years after
their separation. It is a curious commentary on his relations to his
parents, that his highest praise of his father lay in the fact that he
had, by his thrift, left his son an adequate income; and that his main
censure on his mother is that she spends her money too negligently.
His visits to his mother at Weimar were of considerable {23} importance
in the subsequent development of his thought, for it was there that he
made the acquaintance, not only of Goethe, who influenced him
profoundly for a time, but also of F. Mayer, the orientalist, who
directed his attention to the philosophical literature of ancient
India. This literature left a permanent mark upon his mind.
For the next four years he lived at Dresden. In 1816 he published an
essay _On Vision and Colours_, which has reference to the controversy
which Goethe was waging on the theory of light. Schopenhauer's theory
is fantastic. It is not submitted to experimental evidence, and rests,
as he admits, on "intuitive" certainty.
This early work is hardly in the direct line of the development of
Schopenhauer's thought. It is really a deviation, for which Goethe's
all-compelling influence is responsible. Goethe was at first inclined
to regard Schopenhauer as an opponent, for the essay is rather a
transformation of Goethe's theory than an expansion of it.
His residence at Dresden was the best he could have chosen from the
point of view of his own system of philosophy. Here he could study
better than in almost any other town of Europe the works of art, in
which he was to see a revelation of the meaning of life. The art
collections of the town are among the most famous in Europe, and the
music, both operatic and orchestral, was then, as now, of the highest
quality. In this home of art, Schopenhauer's great system was now
taking shape.
During his daily walks along the banks of the Elbe, he was thinking out
his theories, making notes occasionally in a note-book, and then
striding on again {24} with the rapid pace by which he was recognised
even as an old man.
More and more strongly it was borne in upon him that "inward discord is
the very law of human nature." All his life his thoughts had struck
the note of genuine pessimism. He was always in revolt against the
pain and misery that lie hidden beneath the surface of life. That this
pessimistic bias was fundamentally one of temperament, there can be no
doubt. In letters to him from his mother, we find her constantly
urging him, even as a child, to look upon the brighter side of things.
In a letter written to him in 1806, she writes, "I could tell you
things that would make your hair stand on end, but I refrain, for I
know how you love to brood over human misery in any case."
Even in happiness and success he recognised illusion. Everywhere in
nature we see strife and conflict. One species preys upon another.
The "will to live" necessarily expresses itself as a struggle.
Hegel at this time reigned supreme in the kingdom of philosophy. It
was hardly possible to escape his influence. Schopenhauer, in striving
to give expression to a system which would lay bare the real inner
nature of our life and destiny, was at the same time protesting
passionately against the Hegelian view. It was as a protest against
the all-powerful idealism of this philosophy that his system was
directed in the first place. He represents a reaction against the
absorption of everything in reason. As opposed to this view,
Schopenhauer urged the priority of the will and the feelings as the
fundamental factors in determining the mental life.
The will is the reality behind all life. The intellect is merely a
tool in the service of the will. It is {25} impossible to find in
reason a complete knowledge of the essence of the world. A merely
intellectual philosophy of life is bound to be thin and hollow, and we
should aim rather at a clear and direct insight into life.
Now the will, into which every form of life can be resolved, is the
source of all human misery and unhappiness. The only way in which men
can free themselves from the bondage of the will, and throw off its
yoke, is by looking upon beauty. It is in art that eternal truth is
revealed with a directness and certainty to which science never
attains. This theory is connected with the Platonic theory of Ideas.
The real inner nature of things, the Ideas in the Platonic sense, are
revealed in creative and imaginative art. The faculty of vision, which
enables men to divine this reality behind appearances, and to interpret
it to others, is the gift of the artistic genius. He "understands the
half-uttered speech of nature, and articulates clearly what she only
stammered forth." The man of genius produces works of art by intuitive
insight. He sees through the outer shell to the inner significance
that lies at the heart of things. Genius is the faculty of renouncing
entirely one's own personality for the time being, so as to become
clear vision of the world, free of subjectivity. The genius must have
imagination, above all things, in order to see in things not that which
nature has actually made, but that which she endeavoured to make, but
could not.
Art, however, does not deliver us permanently from life, but only for
moments. It is therefore not a path out of life, but only an
occasional consolation in life.
It is the saint, who through the surrender of all willing, through the
intentional mortification of his own desires, attains to true
resignation. Happiness {26} and unhappiness become then a matter of
indifference, and the spell of the illusion, which held us chained in
the bonds of this world, is broken for ever.
These were the views which found expression in Schopenhauer's great
work, _The World as Will and Idea_, which was finished in 1818. He
found a publisher in Brockhaus of Leipsic. While the work was going
through the press, he attacked his publisher with such violent
rudeness, that Brockhaus wrote declining all further correspondence
with one "whose letters in their supreme coarseness and rusticity
savour more of the cabman than of the philosopher."
The work appeared when Schopenhauer was thirty years of age, an
extraordinarily early date at which to produce so complete and
elaborate a system of philosophy. In this work the outlines of his
whole system are permanently fixed. The whole contains, he says, but a
single thought. That thought exhibits itself as metaphysics,
æsthetics, and ethics. He wrote later many essays and supplements, but
these all go towards confirmation and expansion of his earlier work.
For the rest of his life he was repeating his original theories, with
infinite variation in expression. This is entirely in accord with his
own theory of age. At thirty, he maintained, the intellectual and
moral endowment has reached its highest development. All that is done
later is to vary and expand the main principles already laid down.
His book fell still-born from the press. Twenty years later he
succeeded in getting his publishers to undertake a second edition, but
this too received but scant recognition. Schopenhauer had built great
hopes on his work, and his disappointment was bitter when no word of
notice greeted its appearance. "I dread silence {27} about my system,
as a burnt child dreads the fire," he wrote on one occasion. When
bringing his manuscript to the notice of the publisher, he had written
that the work "would hereafter be the source of a hundred other books."
He confided to a disciple that upon completing the work, he had felt so
convinced that he had solved the enigma of the world, that he had
thought of having his signet-ring carved with the image of the sphinx
throwing herself down the abyss. "My philosophy," he wrote, "is the
real solution of the enigma of the world. In this sense it may be
called a revelation."
Before the book appeared, Schopenhauer travelled to Italy. He first
spent some weeks in Venice, where Byron was living at the time. The
two, however, did not meet. He then set out for Rome, by way of
Bologna and Florence, and there he spent the winter. His time was
spent mostly in the art collections, and in the study of Italian. He
kept, as he always did in travelling, a diary, recording not so much
his observations on things seen, as his moods and moralisings on them.
In May of the following year, as he was returning home, he received the
news of the bankruptcy of the Dantzig house in which almost the entire
means of his mother and his sister were invested. He himself had a far
smaller amount at stake. The business arrangements connected with the
winding-up of the firm, which his mother accepted, were not to
Schopenhauer's taste, and the estrangement between himself and his
relatives now became permanent. He showed his usual promptness to
suspect evil, and his angry accusations were so bitter, that a silence
of eleven years fell between himself and his mother and sister. His
struggle with the firm in question lasted for two years. Schopenhauer
came {28} off triumphant financially, his capital with interest being
paid in full, whereas the other creditors obtained only thirty per cent.
His great work having now been launched in the philosophical world,
Schopenhauer turned his thoughts to the chances of an academic
appointment. After many inquiries he decided finally on Berlin, and
made an application. Specimen copies of his published works were sent
in, and a private trial lecture delivered. Here in 1820 he began his
career as assistant lecturer, and a course of lectures was announced,
of six hours a week, on philosophy in general. He chose as his lecture
hour the very time at which Hegel delivered his principal course,
thinking to enter into direct competition with him, and carry off his
students. His hopes, however, misled him. The students were not to be
beguiled away from the omnipotent Hegel, and Schopenhauer's course was
a complete failure. He was not a good lecturer, and the course fell
through before the end of the term. The lectures were never again
delivered.
The six years he spent in Berlin were not in other respects happy ones.
He was on bad terms with all his colleagues, and even in his private
life he contrived to bring worry and legal trouble upon himself. In a
small entrance hall, common ground to himself and another lodger, he,
one day, found three women engaged in conversation. He demanded their
withdrawal. Two complied, but one, a sempstress lodging in the same
house, refused. Thereupon Schopenhauer, stick in hand, threw her
forcibly twice out of the house. She fell, and on the following day
brought her case before the court. After six months, the verdict went
in Schopenhauer's favour, but an appeal was lodged, and, in his
absence, the court inflicted a fine of twenty thalers, {29} as
compensation for injuries inflicted. Some months later the sempstress
brought a further action. She claimed that her injuries were more
serious than had first appeared, and that she was now permanently
incapacitated for work. Schopenhauer was condemned to pay her sixty
thalers a year as aliment, and five-sixths of the costs of the case.
This sum he paid until the time of her death, twenty years later. On
her death certificate he wrote, "obit anus, abit onus." The episode
throws light on the character of the philosopher, with its marked
strain of coarseness and ill-controlled passion.
Meanwhile, Schopenhauer continued to philosophise, still hoping against
hope for the university professorship, which never came, but sustained
by immense self-confidence in the importance of his message. He lived
at Berlin in absolute seclusion. Social life had no attractions for
him. He was a constant visitor to the theatre, the opera-house, and
the concert-room, and at home his flute was a constant diversion.
These were his chief distractions.
From time to time the thought of marriage had entered into his plans,
but his habits of solitude were growing stronger, and his cynical views
on women were obtaining an ever firmer hold on his mind. His nature
was strongly sensual, and intermittent amorous experience is not the
best school in which to foster the growth of fine feeling or noble
thoughts on the relations of the sexes. It is not surprising to find,
therefore, in his views on women the unmistakable stamp of his personal
experience, a fatal blindness to all but the physical side of sex. The
subject is not one that he passes over with indifference, for it
amounts almost to an obsession with him. He left behind him notes on
{30} love and marriage, which were held by his literary executor to be
unfit for publication, and these were burned accordingly.
It was during these years at Berlin, embittered by the lack of
recognition of his philosophical work, and by his failure in the
academic world, that his attacks on university professors grew so
virulent. He attributed his failure in both respects to conspiracy on
the part of those in power. His attacks on Hegel grew ever fiercer.
In 1829 he was anxious to undertake a translation into English of
Kant's chief works. He wrote to the publishers, urging his claims,
saying "a century may pass before there shall again meet in the same
head so much Kantian philosophy with so much English, as happen to
dwell together in mine." The proposal came to nothing, and Kant's
_Critique_ had to wait for nearly ten years longer before it appeared
in an English form.
In 1831 the cholera broke out in Berlin, and Schopenhauer immediately
took to flight. Hegel was one of the victims of this outbreak. In one
of his later works, Schopenhauer describes how he had been moved to
leave Berlin, on the entry of the cholera, by means of a dream. He had
dreamed of a little schoolfellow and playmate, who died in childhood,
"It may have been," he says, "of hypothetical truth, a warning in
short, that if I had remained, I should have died of the cholera.
Immediately after my arrival in Frankfurt, I was the subject of a
perfectly distinct apparition, as I believe, of my parents, and
signifying that I should survive my mother, who was still alive; my
father, already deceased, carried a light in his hand." This is
significant, as showing Schopenhauer's belief in the supernatural, and
in mystical influences.
After leaving Berlin, Schopenhauer settled at Frankfurt, {31} and with
the exception of one year, which was spent at Mannheim, he lived there
until his death twenty-seven years later. For twenty years after
coming to Frankfurt he lived in entire isolation. Now and again, at
rare intervals, an article from his pen appeared, but this is the only
sign of life. We hear nothing of his personal life during this period.
Friends he seems to have had none, and all personal intercourse with
acquaintances invariably came to an abrupt end, owing to his intolerant
attitude towards those who dared to disagree with any of his views.
Only when he reaches the verge of old age do we once again have some
record of him. This latter part of his life was spent with unvaried
regularity. His chief occupation and solace is philosophy. His daily
routine was mapped out, according to a regular plan, which hardly
varied from day to day. He worked during the forenoon for three or
four hours. At noon he enjoyed half an hour's relaxation on the flute.
He dined daily at a hotel. After an hour's rest, the afternoon was
given up to lighter literature. His favourite authors, among poets,
were Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Calderon. The study of the great
classical writers was all his life his greatest delight. The
degradation in style of contemporary literature, which he constantly
bemoaned, he held to be due largely to the neglect of classical
literature. "Without Latin," he wrote, "a man must be content to be
counted amongst the vulgar." He regretted the disuse of the Latin
language as a means of communication between scholars. Apart
altogether from the educational value of the classics, he thought no
other literature afforded the same refreshment and enjoyment for the
mind. To take one of the classics in one's hand, even for half {32} an
hour, is to feel refreshed, purified, elevated, and strengthened,
exactly as if one had drunk from a fresh rock spring.
In the afternoon, whatever the weather, Schopenhauer took his daily
walk, together with his dog, his invariable companion. The two were
well-known figures in Frankfurt, as they took their customary exercise
together. Schopenhauer's devotion to his dog was boundless. For the
animal world altogether he had a special tenderness, pitying animals as
the tortured souls of the earth, and holding that in all essentials
they are the same as man. He condemned vivisection, on the ground that
animals have rights.
For two hours he took his customary walk, at a rapid pace, in
accordance with his theory that quick movement is essential to health.
Then he visited the reading-room of the town, never omitting to look
through the _Times_. The evening was spent frequently at the theatre,
or in the concert-room. In his later years, his growing deafness
robbed him of much of the pleasure which he had always won from music.
On returning home, he read for an hour, and then retired to rest. All
his life he was afraid of robbers, and took extraordinary precautions
against them. He slept invariably with loaded weapons by his bedside,
and his valuables were hidden away with great ingenuity in various
corners of his rooms. He believed that a thinker needed more than the
ordinary amount of sleep to recuperate after the day's labours. His
rule of life was modelled on that of Kant, but of Kant's early rising
he strongly disapproved, believing it to be a reckless waste of vital
energy.
Thus the latter part of his life is occupied with careful rules for the
preservation of his health, which was {33} naturally robust. The
contradiction is at once obvious between his actual mode of life and
his own moral ideal, as set forth in his works. Some of his most
eloquent writing is on the subject of holiness, attained through
renunciation and self-denial. Poverty, chastity, and constant
mortification of the will are the ways along which man must travel to
gain the highest moral solution of life. Schopenhauer was perfectly
conscious of this contradiction between his ideals and his own way of
life. But, he says, it is just as little needful that a saint should
be a philosopher, as that a philosopher should be a saint. In the same
way, it is not necessary that a perfectly beautiful man should be a
great sculptor, or that a great sculptor should himself be a beautiful
man. It is a strange demand, that a moralist should teach no other
virtue than that which he himself possesses.
After 1818, when _The World as Will and Idea_ appeared, he published
nothing further until 1836. In that year, a small book called _On the
Will in Nature_ appeared. It was described on the title-page as "a
discussion of the corroborations which the philosophy of the author
has, since its first appearance, received at the hands of empirical
science." During these eighteen years, in which no new work of his was
published, he had been collecting from all that he read, or saw, or
heard, everything that could in any way be brought to bear as evidence
towards the proof of his main theories and principles. Especially had
he been on the alert with regard to scientific investigation, believing
that his own sceptical generation would be most strongly influenced by
anything that science could bring forward as confirmation of his
metaphysical principles. Physics, he thought, had arrived at the point
where it touches {34} metaphysics. He was now confident that the time
for his philosophy was ripening. But in spite of this confidence, the
book met with no more recognition than had his previous works.
In 1838 he competed successfully for a prize offered by the Scientific
Society of Drontheim, in Norway, for the best essay on the question
"whether free-will could be proved from the evidence of consciousness."
The subject could not have been more happily chosen to suit him. His
essay won the prize, and he was elected a member of the Society. He
obtained permission from the Society to publish his essay in Germany.
Meanwhile he was competing for another prize, offered by the Royal
Danish Academy of the Sciences, at Copenhagen, on the subject of the
sources or the basis of morality. He was confident of success, and
wrote to the Academy asking that the award might be speedily made
public, as he proposed to publish his essay along with the one which
had been successful in Norway. His confidence was premature, for when
the Danish Academy made known its decision, it announced that
Schopenhauer's essay was the only one sent in, but that it was unworthy
of the prize on several grounds, one of which was, that several of the
chief philosophers had been treated with contempt.
From this time his rage against the three philosophers, Hegel, Fichte,
and Schelling, knows no bounds. He attributed his failure to win
recognition to a conspiracy among them and their followers. His
writings abound in violent invective against them. In several ways
there are points of contact between the system of Schopenhauer and that
of Hegel, but Schopenhauer refused to admit any kinship between them.
His two treatises were published together, as he had {35} intended.
They appeared in 1841 as _The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics_.
These two problems are the freedom of the will and the basis of
morality. The treatment is little more than an expansion of the
theories set forth in his chief work. He finds the roots of morality
in sympathy. The sense of brotherhood, which binds together individual
and individual, and welds them into an organic whole, is the foundation
on which all the moral sentiments are built. All goodness, love,
virtue, and nobility of character spring from the same source, from
sympathy, which is the same in its nature as pure love. Beyond the
egoism, which is fostered by the world around us, there exists also the
principle of altruism, impelling men to self-sacrifice, unselfishness,
and devotion.
The second edition of _The World as Will and Idea_, which appeared in
1844, seemed at first as likely to fail of attaining recognition as the
earlier one. But a change was now at hand. The reign of optimistic
pantheism was approaching its end in Germany. The lofty idealism,
which was the strength of the dominant school of thought, and which
found political expression in the revolutionary movements of 1848, was
now followed by a wave of reaction. The democratic movement, after
obtaining some temporary triumphs, was checked completely for the time,
and a wave of weariness and discouragement passed over the country.
Schopenhauer looked on, while Frankfurt was torn violently asunder in
the throes of its revolution. His sentiments were against the
democratic party, and he seems to have feared, above all else, the
possibility of losing his private means. In letters written at this
time to his friends, Schopenhauer expresses his dislike and disapproval
of the great national movement of 1848. He {36} was a thorough-going
individualist, and the movement, which stirred to the depths the finest
natures of the time, found no response in Schopenhauer's heart. His
room was used by Austrian soldiers, who shot from the windows upon the
democrats below.
His political views are expressed again in his will, made in 1852, in
which Schopenhauer left the greater part of his estate to be spent for
the benefit of the soldiers who had been wounded at Berlin, in 1818, in
defence of the royal party against the democratic revolutionaries. In
his view, the State exists only to secure safety of persons and
property. It is a strange error, he says, to attribute to the State
any moral function. It is to be regarded merely as the night-watchman,
who protects us from thieves and robbers.
The German Parliament, which sat at Frankfurt, had but a short-lived
existence. In the reaction which followed, Schopenhauer's philosophy
found an open door. Disciples attached themselves gradually to the
philosopher, and by degrees his system gained ground at home and abroad.
The work which won for him more popularity than any other, was _Parerga
and Paralipomena_ (Chips and Scraps), published in 1851. The work had
been declined by three publishers before a Berlin firm agreed to
publish, without any payment to the author. The book consists of
essays of a very heterogeneous kind, and of varying length. Most of
the chief problems discussed in his larger works are treated again in
the essays. Religion, education, archæology, Sanscrit, style, noise,
ghosts, and immortality are a few of the subjects dealt with.
Schopenhauer's reading was wide. His quotations range freely over
oriental, classical, and modern literature.
The success which followed the publication of this {37} book was
reflected on the earlier works, and it was now possible to bring out
further editions. Schopenhauer's delight at this tardy recognition was
unbounded. Every scrap of applause was gathered and absorbed with
eagerness. In his letters during this period, everyone who differs
from him is denounced as a charlatan and a windbag. Everyone who says
anything at all similar is attacked as a plagiarist. Every adversary
is moved by the meanest motives. So virulent is his abuse, and so
coarse his language, that words in his letters have sometimes to be
changed for an initial. Nothing short of adulation, could satisfy his
hungry vanity. Even when the universities at last acknowledged him,
and offered a prize for the best exposition and criticism of his
system, he was enraged at the award of the prize to a student who
treated him as of more importance in a literary than in a philosophical
capacity. Praise of any other philosophy than his own filled him with
bitterness. His correspondence with Frauenstadt, Lindner, and Asher is
full of such weakness. It may be doubted whether any great man ever
left behind him letters of so trifling a nature, so steeped in vanity
and so resentful of any breath of criticism.
He was active to the end of his life, though the first fine rapture of
his passionate love for all that is best in art was dimmed inevitably
with the passing years. There is a pathetic reference in a letter to
this dulling of his power of vision. "In the time," he writes, "when
my spirit was at its zenith, whatever object my eye rested upon made
revelations to me. Now that I am old, it may happen that I stand in
front of Raphael's Madonna, and she says nothing to me."
He died suddenly, in 1860, at the age of seventy-two. The stone which
marks his grave bears as inscription the sole words "Arthur
Schopenhauer."
{38}