Wherever one goes one immediately comes upon this incorrigible mob
of humanity. It exists everywhere in legions; crowding, soiling
everything, like flies in summer. Hence the numberless bad books,
those rank weeds of literature which extract nourishment from the
corn and choke it. They monopolize the time, money and attention
which really belong to good books and their noble aims; they are
written merely with a view to making money or procuring places.
They are not only useless, but they do positive harm. Nine-tenths
of the whole of our present literature aims solely at taking a few
shillings out of the public's pocket, and to accomplish this,
author, publisher and reviewer have joined forces.
--_Schopenhauer_
[Illustration: SCHOPENHAUER]
The philosophy we evolve is determined by what we are; just as a nation
passes laws legalizing the things it wishes to do. "Where the artist is,
there you will find art," said Whistler. We will not get the Ideal
Commonwealth until we get Ideal People; and we will not get an ideal
philosophy until we get an ideal philosopher. Place the mentally and
morally slipshod in ideal surroundings and they will quickly evolve a
slum, just as did John Shakespeare, when at Stratford he was fined two
pounds ten for maintaining a sequinarium. All we can say for John is
that he was the author of a fine boy, who resembled his mother much more
than he did his father. This seems to prove Schopenhauer's remark
concerning a divine sonship: "Paternity is a cheap office, anyway,
accomplished without cost, care or risk, and of it no one should boast.
A divine motherhood is the only thing that is really sacred."
It isn't his philosophy that makes a man--man makes his philosophy, and
he makes it in his own image. Living in a world of strife, where the
most savage beast that roams the earth is man, the Philosophy of
Pessimism has its place.
Schopenhauer proved himself a true philosopher when he said: "All we
see in the world is a projection from our own minds. I may see one
thing, you another; and according to the test of a third party we are
both wrong, for he sees something else. So we are all wrong, yet all are
right."
He was quite willing to admit that he had a well-defined moral squint
and a touch of mental strabismus; but he revealed his humanity by
blaming his limitations on his parents, and charging up his faults and
foibles to other people.
It is possible that Carlyle's famous remark about the people who daily
cross London Bridge was inspired by Schopenhauer, who, when asked what
kind of people the Berliners were, replied, "Mostly fools!"
"I believe," ventured the interrogator--"I believe, Herr Schopenhauer,
that you yourself live at Berlin?"
"I do," was the response, "and I feel very much at home there."
* * * * *
Heinrich Schopenhauer, the father of Arthur Schopenhauer, was a banker
and shipping merchant of the city of Danzig, Germany. He was a
successful man, and, like all successful men, he was an egotist. Before
the world will believe in you, you must believe in yourself. And another
necessary element in success is that you must exaggerate your own
importance, and the importance of your work. Self-esteem will not alone
make you successful, but without a goodly jigger of self-esteem, success
will forever dally and dance just beyond your reach. The humble men who
have succeeded in impressing themselves upon the world have all taken
much pride in their humility.
Heinrich Schopenhauer was a proud man--as proud as the Merchant of
Venice--and in his veins there ran a strain of the blue blood of the
Castilian Jew. Too much success is most unfortunate. Heinrich
Schopenhauer was proud, unbending, harsh, arbitrary, wore a full beard
and a withering smile, and looked upon musicians, painters, sculptors
and writers as court clowns, to be trusted only as far as you could
fling Taurus by the tail. All good bookkeepers have, even yet, this
pitying contempt for those whose chief assets are ideas--the legal
tender of the spirit. The Alameda smile is the smile of scorn worn by
the bookkeepers who prepare the balance-sheets for the great merchants
of San Francisco. Alameda is young, but the Alameda smile is classic.
When Heinrich Schopenhauer was forty he married a beautiful girl of
twenty. She had ideas about art and poetry, and was passing through her
Byronic stage, before Byron did, and taking it rather hard, when her
parents gave her in troth to Heinrich Schopenhauer, the rich merchant.
It was regarded as a great catch.
I wish that I could say that Heinrich and Johanna were happy ever after,
but in view of the well-known facts put forth by their firstborn child,
I can not do it.
Before marriage the woman has her way: let her make the most of her
power--she'll not keep it long! Shortly after their marriage Heinrich
saw symptoms of the art instinct creeping in, and players on sweet
zither-strings, who occasionally called, compelled him to take measures.
He bought a country seat, four miles from the city, on an inaccessible
road, and sent his bride thither. Here he visited her only on Saturdays
and Sundays, and her callers were the good folk he chose to bring with
him.
Marital peace is only possible where women are properly
suppressed--lumity dee!
It was under these conditions that Arthur Schopenhauer was born, on
February Twenty-second--in deference to our George Washington--Seventeen
Hundred Eighty-eight.
The chief quality that Schopenhauer inherited from his father was the
Alameda smile--and this smile of contempt was for all those who did not
think as he did. The mother never professed to have any love for her
husband, or the child either, and the child never professed to have any
love for his mother. He once wrote this: "I was an unwelcome child, born
of a mother in rebellion--she never wanted me, and I reciprocate the
sentiment."
* * * * *
In that troublous year of Seventeen Hundred Ninety-three, the Free City
of Danzig fell under the sway of Prussia.
Heinrich Schopenhauer, who loved freedom, jealous of his privileges,
fearful of his rights, immediately packed up his effects, sold out his
property--at great loss--and moved to the Free City of Hamburg.
That his fears for the future were quite groundless, as most fears are,
is a fact relevant but not consequent.
Johanna was vivacious and eminently social. She spoke French, German,
English and Italian. She played the harp, sang, wrote poetry and acted
in dramas of her own composition. Around her there always clustered a
goodly group of men with long hair, dreamy eyes and pointed beards, who
soared high, dived deep, but seldom paid cash. This is the paradise to
which most women wish to attain: to be followed by a concourse of
artistic archangels--what nobler ambition! And let the great biological
and historical fact here be written down--that there are no female
angels.
Heinrich did not settle down in Hamburg and go into business, as he
expected. He and his wife and boy traveled much--through England,
France, Germany and Switzerland.
This man and his wife were trying to get away from themselves. Long
years after, their son wrote, "When people die and wake up in hell they
will probably be surprised to find that they are just such beings as
they were when they were on earth."
For a year the lad was left at school with a clergyman at Wimbledon, in
England. The strict religious discipline to which he was there subjected
seemed to have had much to do with forming in him a fierce hatred of
English orthodoxy; but he learned the language and became familiar with
the great names in English literature. The King Arthur stories pleased
him, and he always took a peculiar satisfaction in the fact that the
name Arthur was the same in English, German and French. He was a
prenatal cosmopolitan.
Boarding-schools are a great scheme for getting the children out of the
way--it throws the responsibility upon some one else. When nine years of
age, Arthur was placed in a French boarding-school, remaining for two
years. There he learned to speak French so fluently that when he
returned to Hamburg and tried to talk to his mother in German, his
broken speech threw that excellent woman into fits of laughter.
When the mature man of affairs takes a young girl to wife, he expects to
mold her to his nature, but he reckons without his host. Heinrich
Schopenhauer's opposition to his wife's wishes was not strong enough to
crush her--it simply developed in her a deal of wilful, dogged strength.
One winter day in Eighteen Hundred Four the body of Heinrich
Schopenhauer was found in the canal at Hamburg.
Arthur was then sixteen years of age--old for his years, traveled,
clever--strong in body and robust in health.
In wandering with his parents, he had met Goethe, Wieland, Madame De
Stael, Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, and many other distinguished
people, for his mother was a famous lion-hunter, and wherever they went,
the great ones were tracked to their lairs. But however much Madame
Schopenhauer indulged in hero-worship, she had no expectations or
ambitions for her son. She apprenticed him as a clerk and did her utmost
to immerse him in commerce. What she desired was freedom for herself,
and the popular plan to gain freedom is to enslave others. Madame
Schopenhauer moved to Weimar and opened there a sort of literary salon.
She wrote verses, novels, essays, and her home became the center of a
certain artistic group. The fortune her husband had left was equal to
about forty thousand dollars, one-third of which was to go to Arthur
when he was twenty-one. The mother had the handling of it all until that
time, and as the funds were well invested, her income was equal to about
two thousand dollars a year.
A handsome widow, under forty, with no encumbrances to speak of, and a
fair income, is very fortunately situated. Indeed, a great writer has
recently written an essay showing that widows, discreetly bereaved, are
the happiest creatures on earth.
Young Schopenhauer, at his desk in Hamburg, grieved over the death of
his father. That which is lost becomes valuable--bereavement softens the
heart. The only tenderness that is revealed in the writings of
Schopenhauer refers to his father. He affirms the sterling honesty of
the man, and lauds the merchant who boldly states that he is in business
to make money, and compares him with the philosophers who clutch for
power and fame and yet pretend they are working for humanity. When
Schopenhauer was past sixty, he dedicated his complete works to the
memory of his father. As nothing purifies like fire, so does nothing
sanctify like death--the love we lose is the only love we keep.
Mathematics, bills and balance-sheets were odious to young Schopenhauer.
He reverenced the memory of his father, but his mother had endowed him
with a strong impulse for expression. He wrote little essays on the
backs of envelopes, philosophized over his bills, sneaked out of the
countingroom the back way to attend the afternoon lectures by the great
Doctor Gall, and finally, boldly followed his mother to Weimar, that he
might bask in the shadow of the mighty Goethe. It was shortly after this
that he sat in a niche of Goethe's library, musing, sad and solitary,
while a gay throng chattered by. Some young women, seeing him there,
laughed, and one asked, "Is it alive?" And Goethe, overhearing the
pleasantry, rebuked it by saying, "Do not smile at that youth--he will
yet eclipse us all."
At Weimar there was no greeting for Schopenhauer from his mother--she
welcomed all but her son. Unfortunately for her, she put herself on
record by writing him letters. Scathing letters are all right, but they
should be directed and stamped, then burned just before they are trusted
to the mails. To record unkindness is tragedy, for the unkind word lives
long after the event that caused it is forgotten. Here is one letter
written by Madame Schopenhauer that this methodical son saved for
posterity:
_My Dear Son:_
I have always told you it is difficult to live with you. The more I
get to know you, the more I feel this difficulty increase. I will
not hide it from you: as long as you are what you are, I would
rather bring any sacrifice than consent to be near you. I do not
undervalue your good points, and that which repels me does not lie
in your heart; it is in your outer, not your inner being; in your
ideas, your judgment, your habits; in a word, there is nothing
concerning the outer world in which we agree. Your ill-humor, your
complaints of things inevitable, your sullen looks, the
extraordinary opinions you utter, like oracles, none may presume to
contradict; all this depresses me and troubles me, without helping
you. Your eternal quibbles, your laments over the stupid world and
human misery, give me bad nights and unpleasant dreams....
Your Dear Mother, etc.,
_Johanna Schopenhauer_
* * * * *
The young man took lodgings at Weimar, at a goodly distance from his
mother. Goethe held out a friendly hand, as he did to Mendelssohn, and
all bright young men. They talked much, and Goethe read to Arthur his
essay on the theory of colors (for Wolfgang Goethe was human and dearly
loved the sound of his own voice). The reasoning so impressed the youth
that he devised a chromatic theory of his own--almost as peculiar.
Theories are for the theorizer, so all theories are useful.
At the earnest importunity of his mother, who starved him to it, Arthur
went back to his clerkship, but soon returned and made terms, agreeing
not to call on his mother, in consideration of a pound a week. He took
lessons in Greek and Latin of a retired professor, attended lectures,
fell in love with an actress--vowed he would marry her, but, luckily for
her, he didn't.
When he was twenty-one, his mother turned over to him his patrimony,
amounting to about fourteen thousand dollars; and suggested that he
leave Weimar and make his fortune elsewhere--the world was wide.
His money was invested so it brought him an income of seven hundred
dollars a year. And here seems a good place to say that Schopenhauer's
income was never over a thousand dollars a year until after he was
fifty-six years of age. Although he could not make money, yet he had
inherited from his father an ability to care for it. Throughout his life
he kept exact books of account, never ran in debt, and never allowed
his expenditures to outrun his income, thus complying with Charles
Dickens' recipe for happiness.
In still another way he revealed that he could apply philosophy to daily
life: he exercised regularly in the open air, took long walks, was
absurdly exact about his cold baths, and like Kant, served the neighbors
as a chronometer, so they set their clocks at three when they saw him
going forth for a walk. And in the interests of truth, we will have to
make the embarrassing admission that the great Apostle of Pessimism was
neither a dyspeptic nor an invalid--if he was ever aware that he had a
stomach we do not hear of it.
* * * * *
The life of Schopenhauer is the life of a recluse--a visionary--a hermit
who lost himself amid the maze of city streets, and moved solitary in
the throng. Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, Gottingen, Frankfort, engaged him,
and from one to the other he turned, looking for the rest he never
found, and which he knew he would never find, so in the vain search
there was no disappointment. He was always happiest when most miserable,
for then were his theories proved.
A single room in a lodging-house sufficed, and this room always had the
appearance of being occupied by a transient. He had few books,
accumulated no belongings in way of domestic ballast, persistently
giving away things that were presented to him, satisfied if he had a
chair, a bed, and a table upon which to write; getting his own
breakfast, dining at the table d'hote of the nearest inn, with supper at
a "Gast-Haus"--so passed his days. He had no intimate friends, and his
chief dissipation was playing the flute. His black poodle, named "Homo"
in a subtle mood of irony, accompanied him everywhere, and on this dog
he lavished what he was pleased to call his love. He anticipated Rip Van
Winkle concerning dogs and women, and when Homo died, he bought another
dog that looked exactly like the first, and was just as good.
In a few instances Schopenhauer read his essays in public as lectures,
but his ideas were keyed to concert pitch and were too pronounced for
average audiences. He was offered a professorship at Gottingen and also
at Heidelberg, if he would "tone things down," but he scornfully
declined the proposition, and said, "The Universities must grow to my
level before I can talk to them." By his caustic criticisms of
contemporaries he became both feared and shunned, and no doubt he found
a certain satisfaction in the fact that the so-called learned men of his
time would neither listen to his lectures, read his books, nor abide his
presence. He had made himself felt in any event. "Blessed are ye when
men shall revile you," is the sweet consolation of all persecuted
persons--and persecution is only the natural resentment towards those
who have too much ego in their cosmos.
His opinions concerning love and marriage need not be taken too
seriously. Ideas are the results of temperaments and moods. When a man
amplifies on the woman question he describes the women he knows best,
and more especially the particular She who is in his head. Literature is
only autobiography, more or less discreetly veiled. Schopenhauer hated
his mother to the day of her death, and although during the last
twenty-four years of her life he never once saw her, her image could at
any time be quickly and vividly thrown upon the screen. The women a
strong man has known are never forgotten--here is where time does not
tarnish, nor the days grow dim.
Between his twenty-eighth and fortieth years, Schopenhauer had wandered
through Italy--spent months at Venice, and dawdled away the days at Rome
and Florence. He had dipped deep into life--and the wrong kind of life.
And his experiences had confirmed his suspicions--it was all bitter--he
was not disappointed.
Until Schopenhauer was past thirty he was known as the son of Johanna
Schopenhauer. And when he once told her that posterity would never
remember her except as the mother of her son, she reciprocated by
congratulating him that his books could always be had cheap in the first
editions.
He retorted, "Mamma Dear, my books will be read when butchers are using
yours for wrapping up meat." In some ways this precious pair were very
much alike.
It is very probable that Schopenhauer's mother was not so base as he
thought; and when he declared, "Woman's morality is only a kind of
prudence," he might have said the same of his own. He stood aloof from
life and said things about it. He had no wife, no child, no business, no
home--he dared not venture boldly into the tide of existence--he stood
forever on the bank, and watched the current carrying its flotsam and
jetsam to the hungry sea.
In his love for the memory of his father, and in his tender care for his
dog, we get a glimpse of depths that were never sounded. One side of his
nature was never developed. And the words of the undeveloped man are
worth what they are worth.
Schopenhauer once said to Wieland, "Life is a ticklish business--I
propose to spend my time looking at it." This he did, viewing existence
from every angle, and writing out his thoughts in terse, epigrammatic
language.
Among all the German writers on philosophy, the only one who had a
distinct literary style is Schopenhauer. Form was quite as much to him
as matter--and in this he showed rare wisdom; although I am told that
the writers who have no literary style are the only ones who despise it.
Dishes to be palatable must be rightly served: appetite--literary,
gastronomic or sexual--is largely a matter of imagination.
Schopenhauer need not be regarded as final. The chief virtue of the man
lies in the fact that he makes us think, and thus are we his debtors.
In this summary of Schopenhauer's philosophy I have had the valuable
assistance of my friend and fellow-worker in the Roycroft Shop, George
Pannebakker, a kinsman and enthusiastic admirer of the great Prophet of
Pessimism.
In talking to Mr. Pannebakker, I am inclined to exclaim, "Thou almost
persuadest me to be a pessimist!" It is unfortunate that our English
tongue contains no word that stands somewhere between pessimism and
optimism--that symbols a judicial cast of mind which sees the Truth
without blinking and accepts it without complaint. The word Pessimist
was first flung in contempt at those who dared to express unpalatable
truth. It is now accepted by a large number of intellectuals, and if to
be a pessimist is to have insight, wit, calm courage, patience,
persistency, and a disposition that accepts all Fate sends and makes the
best of it, then pity 'tis we haven't more.
* * * * *
The root of existence, the inmost kernel of all being, the original
vitalizing power, the fundamental reality of the universe, is, according
to Schopenhauer, "WILL." What is Will? Will, in the usual sense, is the
faculty of our mind by which we decide to do or not to do. Will is the
power to choose. In Schopenhauer's philosophy, Will is something less as
we know will, and something more than force. Will, connected with
consciousness, as peculiar to man, is, in a less developed form, the
real essence of all matter, of all things, organic or inorganic. Will is
the blind, irresistible striving for existence; the unconscious
organizing power, the omnipotent creative force of Nature, pervading the
whole limitless universe; the endeavor to be, to evolve, to expand.
The whole world of phenomena is the objectivation or apparition of Will.
Will, the same force which slumbers in the stone as inert gravity, forms
the crystals with such wonderful regularity.
Will impels a piece of iron to move with ardent desire toward the
magnet. Will causes the magnet to point with unfailing constancy to the
north. Will causes the embryo to cling as a parasite and feed on the
body of the mother. Will causes the mother's breast to fill that her
babe may be fed. Will fills the mother-heart with love that the young
may be cared for.
The same force urges the tender germ of the plant to break through the
hard crust of the earth and, stretching toward the light, to enfold
itself in the proud crown of the palm-tree. Will sharpens the beak of
the eagle and the tooth of the tiger and, finally, reaches its highest
grade of objectivation in the human brain. Want, the struggle for
existence, the necessity of procuring and selecting sufficient food for
the preservation of the individual and the species, has at last
developed a suitable tool, the brain, and its function, the intellect.
With the intellect appear consciousness and a realm of rational life
full of yearning and desires, pleasures and pain, hatred and love.
Brothers slay their brothers, conquerors trample down the races of the
earth, and tyrants are forging chains for the nations.
There is violence and fear, vexation and trouble. Unrest is the mark of
existence, and onward we are swept in the hurrying whirlpool of change.
This manifold restless motion is produced and kept up by the agency of
two single impulses--hunger and the sexual instinct. These are the chief
agents of the Lord of the Universe--the Will--and set in motion so
strange and varied a scene.
The Will-to-Live is at the bottom of all love-affairs. Every kind of
love springs entirely from the instinct of sex.
Love is under bonds to secure the existence of the human race in future
times. The real aim of the whole of love's romance, although the persons
concerned are unconscious of the fact, is that a particular being may
come into the world.
It is the Will-to-Live, presenting itself in the whole species, which so
forcibly and exclusively attracts two individuals of different sex
towards each other.
This yearning and this pain do not arise from the needs of an ephemeral
individual, but are, on the contrary, the sigh of the Spirit of the
Species.
Since life is essentially suffering, the propagation of the species is
an evil--the feeling of shame proves it.
In his "Metaphysics of Love," Schopenhauer says: "We see a pair of
lovers exchanging longing glances--yet why so secretly, timidly and
stealthily? Because these lovers are traitors secretly striving to
perpetuate all the misery and turmoil that otherwise would come to a
timely end."
Will, as the source of life, is the origin of all evil.
Having awakened to life from the night of unconsciousness, the
individual finds itself in an endless and boundless world, striving,
suffering, erring; and, as though passing through an ominous dream, it
hurries back to the old unconsciousness. Until then, however, its
desires are boundless, and every satisfied wish begets a new one.
So-called pleasures are only a mode of temporary relief. Pain soon
returns in the form of satiety. Life is a more or less violent
oscillation between pain and ennui. The latter, like a bird of prey,
hovers over us, ready to swoop down wherever it sees a life secure from
need.
The enjoyment of art, as the disinterested cognition devoid of Will, can
afford an interval of rest from the drudgery of Will service. But
esthetic beatitude can be obtained only by a few; it is not for the hoi
polloi. And then, art can give only a transient consolation.
Everything in life indicates that earthly happiness is destined to be
frustrated or to be recognized as an illusion. Life proves a continuous
deception, in great as well as in small matters. If it makes a promise,
it does not keep it, unless to show that the coveted object was little
desirable.
Life is a business that does not pay expenses.
Misery and pain form the essential feature of existence.
Life is hell, and happy is that man who is able to procure for himself
an asbestos overcoat and a fire-proof room.
Looking at the turmoil of life, we find all occupied with its want and
misery, exerting all their strength in order to satisfy its endless
needs and avert manifold suffering, without daring to expect anything
else in return than merely the preservation of this tormented individual
existence, full of want and misery, toil and moil, strife and struggle,
sorrow and trouble, anguish and fear--from the cradle to the grave.
Existence, when summed up, has an enormous surplus of pain over
pleasure.
You complain that this philosophy is comfortless! But Schopenhauer sees
life through Schopenhauer's eyes, and tells the truth about it as he
sees it. He does not care for your likes and dislikes. If you want to
hear soft platitudes, he advises you to go to a non-conformist
church--read the newspapers, go somewhere else, but not to the
philosopher who cares only for Truth.
Although Schopenhauer's picture of the world is gloomy and somber, there
is nothing weak or cowardly in his writings, and the extent to which he
is read, proves he is not depressing. Since a happy life is impossible,
he says the highest that a man can attain to is the fate of a hero.
A man must take misfortune quietly, because he knows that very many
dreadful things may happen in the course of life. He must look upon the
trouble of the moment as only a very small part of that which will
probably come.
We must not expect very much from life, but learn to accommodate
ourselves to a world where all is relative and no perfect state exists.
Let us look misfortune in the face and meet it with courage and
calmness!
Fate is cruel and men are miserable. Life is synonymous with suffering;
positive happiness a fata morgana, an illusion.
Only negative happiness, the cessation of suffering, is possible, and
can be obtained by the annihilation of the Will-to-Live.
But it is not suicide that can deliver us from the pains of existence.
Suicide, according to Schopenhauer, frustrates the attainment of the
highest moral aim by the fact that, for a real release from this world
of misery, it substitutes one that is merely apparent. For death merely
destroys the phenomenon, that is, the body, and never my inmost being,
or the universal Will.
Suicide can deliver me merely from my phenomenal existence, and not from
my real self, which can not die.
How, then, can man be released from this life of misery and pain? Where
is the road that leads to Salvation?
Slow and weary is the way of redemption.
The deliverance from life and its sufferings is the freedom of the
intellect from its creator and despot, the Will.
The intellect, freed from the bondage of the Will, sees through the veil
of selfhood into the unity of all being, and finds that he who has done
wrong to another has done wrong to his own self. For selfhood--the
asserting of the Ego--is the root of all evil.
Covetousness and sensuality are the causes of misery.
Sympathy is the basis of all true morality, and only through
renunciation, through self-sacrifice, and universal benevolence, can
salvation be obtained.
He who has recognized that existence is evil, that life is vanity, and
self an illusion, has obtained true knowledge, which is the reflection
of reality. He is in possession of the highest wisdom, which is not
merely theoretical, but also practical perfection; it is the ultimate
true cognition of all things in mass and in detail, which has so
penetrated man's being that it appears as the guide of all his actions.
It illumines his head, warms his heart, leads his hand. We take the
sting out of life by accepting it as it is. "Drink ye all of it."
* * * * *
Arthur Schopenhauer very early in life contracted a bad habit of telling
the truth. He stated the thing absolutely as he saw it. He spared no
one's feelings, and conciliation was not in his bright lexicon of words.
If any belief or any institution was in his way, the pilot in charge of
the craft had better put his prow hard a' port--Schopenhauer swerved for
nobody.
Should every one deal in plain speaking on all occasions, the philosophy
of Ali Baba--that this earth is hell, and we are now suffering for sins
committed in a former incarnation--would be fully proved. Our friends
are the pleasant hypocrites who sustain our illusions. Society is made
possible only through a vast web of delicate evasions, polite
subterfuges, and agreeable falsehoods. The word person comes from
"persona," which means a mask. The reference is to one who plays a
part--assumes a role. The naked truth is not pleasant to look upon, and
that is the reason it is so seldom put upon parade.
The man Schopenhauer would be intolerable, but the writer Schopenhauer
is gaining ground in inverse ratio to the square of the distance we are
from him. "Where shall we bury you?" a friend asked him a few days
before his death.
"Oh, anywhere--posterity will find me!" was the answer. And so on the
modest stone that marks his resting-place at Frankfort, are engraved the
two words, ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, and nothing more. The world will not
soon forget the pessimist who had such undying optimism--such
unquenchable faith--that he knew the world would make a path to his
tomb.
Schopenhauer was the only prominent writer that ever lived who
persistently affirmed that life is an evil--existence a curse. Yet every
man who has ever lived has at times thought so; but to proclaim the
thought--or even entertain it long--would stagger sanity, befog the
intellect and make mind lose its way.
And yet we prize Schopenhauer the more for having said the thing that we
secretly thought; in some subtle way we get a satisfaction out of his
statement, and at the same time, we perceive the man was wrong.
The man who can vivisect an emotion, and lay bare a heart-beat in print,
knows a subtle joy. The misery that can explain itself is not all
misery. Complete misery is dumb; and pain that is all pain is quickly
transformed into insensibility. Schopenhauer's life was quite as happy
as that of many men who persistently depress us by requesting us to
"cheer up." Schopenhauer says, "Don't try to cheer up--the worst is yet
to come." And we can not refrain a smile. A mother once called to her
little boy to come into the house. And the boy answered, "I won't do
it!" And the mother replied, "Stay out then!" And very soon the child
came in.
Truth is only a point of view, and when a man tells us what he sees, we
swiftly take into consideration who and what the man is. Everybody does
this, unconsciously. It depends upon who says it! The garrulous man who
habitually overstates--painting things large--does not deceive anybody,
and is quite as good a companion as the painstaking, exact man who is
always setting us straight on our statistics. One man we take gross and
the other net. The liar gross is all right, but the liar net is very
bad.
Schopenhauer was a talkative, whimsical and sensitive personality, with
a fine assortment of harmless superstitions of his own manufacture. He
was vain, frivolous, self-absorbed, but he had an eye for the subtleties
of existence that quite escape the average individual. He lived in a
world of mind--alert, active, receptive mind--with a rapid-fire gun in
way of a caustic, biting, scathing vocabulary at his command.
The test of every literary work is time. The trite, the commonplace, and
the irrelevant die and turn to dust. The vital lives. Schopenhauer began
writing in his youth. Neglect, indifference and contempt were his
portion until he was over fifty years of age. His passion for truth was
so repelling that the Mutual Admiration Society refused to record his
name even on its waiting-list. He was of that elect few who early in
life succeed in ridding themselves of the friendship of the many. His
enemies discovered him first, and gave him to the world, and after they
had launched his fame with their charges of plagiarism, pretense,
bombast, insincerity and fraud, he has never been out of the limelight,
and in favor he has steadily grown.
No man was ever more thoroughly denounced than Schopenhauer, but even
his most rabid foe never accused him of buying his way into popular
favor, or bribing the judges who sit on the bookcase.
We admire the man because he is such a sublime egotist--he is so
fearfully honest. We love him because he is so often wrong in his
conclusions: he gives us the joy of putting him straight.
Schopenhauer's writing is never the product of a tired pen and ink
unstirred by the spirit. With him we lose our self-consciousness.
And the man who can make other men forget themselves has conferred upon
the world a priceless boon. Introspection is insanity--to open the
windows and look out is health.