KŌBE, July, 1895.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--In reading Schopenhauer (I believe
you have the splendid Haldane & Kemp version in three volumes: it
is said to preserve even the remarkable sonority of the German
original), you may notice where Schopenhauer failed, only through
want of knowledge undeveloped in his time. While highly appreciating
Lamarck,--the greatest of the evolutionists before Darwin, greater
even than Goethe,--he finds fault with his theory as not showing
proof of the prototype formless animal from which all organic forms
existing are derived. Therefore Schopenhauer insisted on the potential
prototype existing in the Will only. But since Schopenhauer's day, the
material formless prototypal animal has been found; and the theory of
Schopenhauer as to forms falls back into a region of pure metaphysics.
He is none the less valuable on that account. He represents the soul
(psyche) of an enormous fact, or at least a soul which can be fitted
to the body of science for the time being. He has been justly called a
German Buddhist; and his philosophy is entirely based on the study of
Brahmanic and Buddhist texts. The only absolutely novel theory in his
book is the essay on sexual love,--vol. 3 in your edition. There is one
defect in it, but that does not hurt the value of the whole. And then
the splendour of style, of self-assertion, of imagery Huxley equalled
only, I think twice, in all of his essays. Of course Schopenhauer
belongs to the evolutional school; that is the reason why he has
been taken up to-day after long neglect. His work gives new force to
evolutional psychology of the new school. The most remarkable popular
effect of the newer school has not, I think, yet been noticed. It is in
fiction; and the success of a work taken in this line recently has made
a fortune for publishers and author. Unfortunately, poor I have not the
constructive art necessary to attempt anything of the kind--not yet!
Perhaps in twenty years more.
Very faithfully,
LAFCADIO HEARN.