THE SPHINX'S RIDDLE.
In the Munich beer halls, when one student is heard laying down the law
about something which he does not understand to a companion who cares
not a rap on the subject, it is very generally taken for granted that
the two are talking metaphysics. Indeed, metaphysics has a bad name
everywhere. In itself, it suggests nothing very enticing, and even its
nomenclature seems to bring with it a sort of ponderosity which is very
nearly akin to the repulsive.
This prejudice, of course, is not without its reason. The philosophers,
nearly one and all, seem to have banded themselves into a sort of
imaginary freemasonry, whose portals they bar to any one refusing to
robe his thoughts in a garment of technical speech. Moreover, at the
very gateway of their guild there looms before the timorous the fear of
a hideous initiation, the cold douche of logic, and the memorizing of
hateful terms. There can therefore be no stronger proof of
Schopenhauer's ability than that which is contained in the fact that he
successfully eluded all these stale abuses, and turned one of the
heaviest kinds of writing into one of the most agreeable.
Indeed, Schopenhauer is not only one of the most profound thinkers of
the essentially profound nineteenth century, but, what is still more
noteworthy, he is an exceptionably fascinating teacher. His spacious
theories and tangential flights are, of course, not such as charm the
reader of the penny dreadful; but any one who is interested in the
drama of evolution and the tragi-comedy of life will, it is believed,
find in him a fund of curious information, such as no other thinker has
had the power to convey.
He has, it is true, made the most of the worst; but beyond this
reproach, but one other of serious import remains to be brought against
him, and that is that though he has been dead and buried for very
nearly a quarter of a century, he is still on the outer margin of his
epoch. For this he is not, of course, entirely to blame. There are
among thinkers many pleasant optimists still, who form a respectable
majority; to be sure, a wise man once said that in considering a new
subject the minority were always right; but, disregarding for the
moment the fallacy of believing that this world is the best one
possible, it cannot but be admitted that scientific pessimism is still
in its infancy. It has yet many prejudices to disarm, and many errors
of its own to correct. Like meaner things, it must mature. For this it
has ample time.
Berkeley says that few men think, yet all have opinions; and it is now
very frequently asserted that when more is thought, not only there will
not be such a diversity of opinion, but at that time Pessimism, as the
religion of the future, will begin its sway.
It has been elsewhere noted that the effect of Kant's philosophy was
not dissimilar to that of a successful operation on cataract, and the
aim of the "World as Will and Idea" is to place in the hands of those
on whom that operation has been satisfactorily performed a pair of such
spectacles as are suitable to convalescent eyes. Schopenhauer is
therefore in a measure indebted to Kant, as also, it may be added, to
Plato, and the sacred books of the Hindus.
In saying, however, that Schopenhauer is indebted to Kant, it is well
to point out that Schopenhauer begins precisely where Kant left off.
Kant's great merit consisted in distinguishing the phenomenon from the
thing-in-itself, or in other words, in showing the difference between
that which seems and that which is.[8] For the inaccessible
thing-in-itself he had no explanation to offer. He called it the _Ding
an sich_, regarded it as the result of an unintelligible cause, and
then left it to be a bugbear to every student of his philosophy.
This unpleasant _Ding an sich_ was exorcised, and well-nigh banished
for good and all, by Fichte and Hegel; but Schopenhauer reëstablished
the incomprehensible factor on a fresh basis, christened it "Will," and
asserted it to be the creator of all that is, and at once independent,
free, and omnipotent; in other words, the interior essence of the world
of which Christ crucified is the sublime symbol. Thus disposed of, the
_Ding an sich_ may now be left to take care of itself, and the
examination of the great theory begun.
Schopenhauer opens his philosophy with the formula, "The world is my
idea;" a formula which, it may be noted, condenses in the fewest
possible words all that is worth condensing of the idealism of Germany.
Beginning in this manner it is evident that he proposes to show neither
whence the world comes nor whither it tends, nor yet why it is, but
simply, _what it is_. The question has been asked before. According to
Schopenhauer, the world is made up of two zones, the real and the
ideal; and it may here be said that over the real and the ideal
Schopenhauer successfully read the banns.
To return, however, to the opening formula. "The world is my idea" is a
truth which holds good for everything that lives and thinks, but which,
however, is appreciable only by man. When appreciated, it is at once
clear that what we know is neither a sun nor an earth, for we have at
best an eye which sees the one, and a hand which feels the other. In
brief, we are unacquainted with either forms or colors; we have but
senses which represent them to us, while objects exist for us merely
through the medium of the intelligence. Indeed, as Schopenhauer has
said, no other truth is more certain and less in need of proof than
this,--that the whole world is simply the perception of a perceiver; in
a word, idea.
Emerson says that the frivolous make themselves merry with this theory;
and it must be admitted that at first it does not seem quite
satisfactory to be told that the world in which we live is nothing more
nor less than a cerebral phenomenon, which man carries with him to the
tomb, and which, in the absence of a perceiver, would not exist at all.
To arrive, however, at a clear understanding of the purely phenomenal
existence of the exterior world, it will suffice to represent to one's
self the world as it was when entirely uninhabited. At that time it was
necessarily without perception. Later, there sprang up a great quantity
of plants, upon which the different forces of light, air, humidity, and
electricity acted according to their nature. If, now, it be remembered
how impressionable plants are to these agents, and how thought leads by
degrees to sensation and thence to perception, immediately then the
world appears representing itself in time and space. Or, reverse the
argument and imagine that the dream of the poet is realized, that
nations have disappeared, and that every living thing has ceased to be,
while beneath the sun's unchanging stare, and enveloped in the sky's
bland, pervasive blue, the earth with her continents and archipelagoes
continues to revolve in space. Under such circumstances it would
naturally seem as though the universe subsisted still. But if the
question is examined more closely, it will perhaps be admitted that
these things remain as they are only on condition of being seen and
felt. For supposing one spectator present, but of a different mental
organization from our own, then the entire scene is changed; suppress
him, and the whole spectacle tumbles into chaos.
This doctrine, as it will be readily understood, does not in any sense
deny the reality of the world in the ordinary acceptation of the term;
it maintains merely that every object is conditioned by its subject;
or, to explain the theory less technically, it will be sufficient to
reflect that for the world, or for anything else, to be an object,
there must be some one as subject to think it; for instance, the
dreamless sleep proves that the earth exists only to the thinking mind,
and should all Nature be rocked in an eternal slumber, there could then
be no question of an exterior world.
If it be asked in what this perception consists, which represents the
exterior world, we find that it is limited to three fundamental
concepts, that of time, space, and their concomitant causality; but
inasmuch as time and space are the receptacle of every phenomenon,
once their ideality is established, the ideality of the world is proven
at the same moment, and with it the truth of the formula, "The world is
my idea."
Now the ideality of time is established, according to Schopenhauer, by
what is known in mechanics as the law of inertia. "For what," he asks
in the "Parerga," "does this law teach? Simply, that time alone cannot
produce any physical action, that alone and in itself it alters nothing
either in the repose or movement of a body. Were it either accidentally
or otherwise inherent in things themselves, it would follow that its
duration or brevity would affect them in a certain measure. But it does
nothing of the sort; time passes over all things without leaving the
slightest trace, for they are acted upon only by the causes that unroll
themselves _in_ time, but in no sense by time itself. When, therefore,
a body is withdrawn from chemical action, as the mammoth in the ice
fields, the fly in amber, and the Egyptian antiquities in their closed
necropoli, thousands of years may pass and leave them unaffected.
Indeed," he adds elsewhere, "the living toads found in limestone lead
to the conclusion that even animal life may be suspended for thousands
of years, provided this suspension is begun in the dormant period and
maintained by special circumstances."
The "London Times," 21st September, 1840, contains a notice to the
effect that, at a lecture delivered by Mr. Pettigrew, at the Literary
and Scientific Institute, the lecturer showed some grains of wheat
which Sir G. Wilkenson had found in a grave at Thebes, where they must
have lain for three thousand years. They were found in an hermetically
sealed vase. Mr. Pettigrew had sowed twelve grains, and obtained a
plant which grew five feet high, and the seeds of which were then quite
ripe.
Many other instances are given of this absolute inactivity; for
example, let a body once be put in motion, that motion is never
arrested or diminished by any lapse of time; it would be never ending
were it not for the reaction of physical causes. In the same manner a
body in repose would remain so eternally did not physical causes put it
in motion. It follows, therefore, that time is not a real existence,
but only a condition of thought, or purely ideal.
In regard to the ideality of space, Schopenhauer says, "The clearest
and most simple proof of the ideality of space is that we can never get
it out of our thoughts, as we might anything else. We can fancy space
as having no longer anything to fill it, we can imagine that everything
within it has disappeared, we can represent it as being, between the
fixed stars, an absolute void, but space itself we can never get rid
of; whatever we do, however we turn, there it is in endless expansion.
This fact certainly proves that space is a part of our intellect; or,
in other words, that it is the woof of the tissue upon which the
different objects of the exterior world apply themselves. As soon as I
think of an object, space appears with it and accompanies every
movement, every turn and _détour_ of my thought, as faithfully as the
spectacles on my nose accompany every movement, every turn and _détour_
of my person, or just in the same manner as the shadow accompanies the
body. If I notice that a thing accompanies me everywhere, and under all
circumstances, I naturally conclude that it is in some way connected
with me; as if, for instance, wherever I went I noticed a particular
odor from which I could not escape. Space is precisely the same;
whatever I think of, what ever I imagine, space comes first and yields
its place to nothing. It must, therefore, be an integral part of my
understanding, and its ideality in consequence must extend to
everything that is thinkable."
Space and time being but the empty framework of phenomenal existence,
something must fill them, and that something is causality, which,
according to Schopenhauer, is synonymous with action and matter. Into
these abstract regions, however, it is unnecessary to follow him any
further. Suffice it to say that having shown in this way that one of
the two zones of which the world is formed is but an effect of the
perceptions, he passes therefrom to the world as it is.
Now there were many paths which might or might not have led him to the
unravelment of the great secret which Kant gave up in despair, there
were many ways which seemed to tend to a direct solution of the
Sphinx's riddle, but the course which he chose, and which brought him
nearer to the proper answer than any other system of which the world
yet knows, may be fairly said to have been inspired by the spirit of
truth, and as an inspiration given first to him of all men.
It was not mathematics that he selected to aid him in his search for
the real, for whatever the subtleties of that science may be, it is
still too superficial to contain an explorable depth. The natural
sciences could aid him as little. Anatomy, botany, and zoölogy reveal,
it is true, an infinite variety of forms, but these forms at best are
but unrelated perceptions, a series of indecipherable hieroglyphics.
Even etiology, when embracing the whole range of physical science,
gives at most but the nomenclature, succession, and changes of
inexplicable forces, without revealing anything of their inner nature.
All these methods were smitten with the same defect,--they were all
external, and offered not the essence of things, but only their image
and description. To employ them, therefore, in a search for truth
would, he said, be on a par with a man who, wandering about a castle
looking vainly for the entrance, takes meanwhile a sketch of the
façade. Such, however, he noted, is the method which all other
philosophers have followed. He concluded, therefore, as man was not
only a thinking being, to whom the world was merely an idea, but an
individual riveted to the earth by a body whose affections were the
starting-point of his intuitions, that reality would come to him, not
from without, but from within. "For this body of man's is," he argued,
"but an object among other objects; its movements and actions are
unknown to the thinking being save as are the changes of the others,
and they would be as incomprehensible to him as his own were not their
signification revealed to him in another manner. He would see movements
follow motives with the constancy of a natural law, and would as little
understand the influence of the motive as the connection of any other
effect with its cause. He could, if he chose, call it force, quality,
or character, but that is all that he would know about it."
What, then, is the interior essence of every manifestation and of every
action? What is that which is identical with the body to such an extent
that to its command a movement always answers? What is that with which
Nature plays, which works dumbly in the rock, slumbers in the plant,
and awakes in man? Schopenhauer answers with a word, "Will." Will, he
teaches, is a force, and should not be taken, as it is ordinarily, to
mean simply the conscious act of an intelligent being. In Nature it is
a blind, unconscious power; in man it is the foundation of being.
But before entering into an examination of the functions and vagaries
of this force, of which everything, from a cataclysm to a blade of
grass, is a derivative, it is well to inquire what its exact rank is.
It has been already said that in man it was the foundation of being,
but from very early times,--as a matter of fact, since the days in
which Anaxagoras lived and taught,--the intellect has held, among all
man's other attributes, a sceptre hitherto uncontested. If
Schopenhauer, however, is to be believed, the supremacy hitherto
accorded to it has been the result of error. The throne, by grace
divine, belongs to Will. The intellect is but the prime minister, the
instrument of a higher force, as the hammer is that of the smith.
If the matter be examined however casually, it will become at once
clear that what we are most conscious of in effort, hope, desire, fear,
love, hatred, and determination, are the workings and manifestations of
Will. If the animal is considered, it will be seen that in the
descending scale intelligence becomes more and more imperfect, while
Will remains entirely unaffected. The smallest insect wants what it
wants as much as man. The intellect, moreover, becomes wearied, while
Will is indefatigable. Indeed, when it is remembered that such men as
Swift, Kant, Scott, Southey, Rousseau, and Emerson have fallen into a
state of intellectual debility, it is well-nigh impossible to deny that
the mind is but a function of the body, which, in turn, is a function
of the Will. But that which probably shows the secondary and dependent
nature of the intelligence more clearly is its peculiar characteristic
of intermittence and periodicity. In deep sleep, the brain rests,
while the other organs continue their work. In brief, then, Intellect
is the light and Will the warmth. "In me," Schopenhauer says, "the
indestructible is not the soul, but rather, to employ a chemical term,
the basis of the soul, which is Will."
Will, moreover, is not only the foundation of being, but, as has been
noted, it is the universal essence. Schopenhauer points out the
ascension of sap in plants, which is no easy problem in hydraulics, and
the insect's marvelous anticipations of the future, and asks what is it
all but Will? The vital force itself, he says, is Will,--Will to
live,--while the organism of the body is but Will manifested, Will
become visible.
As Schopenhauer describes it, Will is also identical, immutable, and
free. Its identity is shown in inorganic life in the irresistible
_tendency_ of water to precipitate itself into cavities, the
_perseverance_ with which the loadstone turns to the north, the
_longing_ that iron has to attach itself to it, the violence with which
contrary currents of electricity _try_ to unite the _choice_ of fluids,
and in the manner in which they join and separate. In organic life, it
is shown by the fact that every vegetable has a peculiar
characteristic: one wants a damp soil, another needs a dry one; one
grows only on high ground, another in the valley; one turns to the
light, another to the water; while the climbing plant seeks a support.
In the animal kingdom there exists another form, which is noticeable in
the partly voluntary, partly involuntary movements of the lowest type.
When, however, in the evolution of Will the insect or the animal seeks
and chooses its food, then intelligence begins and volition passes from
darkness into light.
Will, too, is immutable. It never varies; it is the same in man as in
the caterpillar, for, as has been said, what an insect wants it wants
as decidedly as does a man; the only difference is in the object of
desire. The immutability of Will, moreover, is the base of its
indestructibility; it never perishes, and for that matter what does? In
the world of phenomena all things, it is true, seem to have a birth and
a death, but that is but an illusion, which the philosopher does not
share. Our true being, and the veritable essence of all things, dwell,
Schopenhauer says, in a region where time is not, and where the
concepts of birth and death are without significance. The fear of
death, he adds parenthetically, is a purely independent sentiment, and
one which has its origin in the Will to live. Briefly, it is an
illusion which man brings with him when he is born, and which guides
him through life; for notice that were this fear of death perfectly
reasonable, man would be as uneasy about the chaos which preceded his
existence as about that which is to follow it.
Let the individual die, however; the species is indestructible, for
death is to the species as sleep is to the individual. The species
contains the indestructible, the immutable Will of which the
individual is a manifestation. It contains all that is, all that was,
and all that will be.
"When we think of the future and of the coming generations, the
millions of human beings who will differ from us in habits and customs,
and we try in imagination to fancy them with us, we wonder from where
they will spring, where they are now? Where is this fecund chaos, rich
in worlds, that hides the generations that are to be? And where can it
be save there, where every reality has been and will be,--here, in the
present, and what it contains. And you, foolish questioner, who do not
recognize your own essence, you are like the leaf on the tree which,
withering in autumn, and feeling it is about to fall, laments at death,
inconsolable at the knowledge of the fresh verdure which in spring will
cover the tree once more. The leaf cries, 'I am no more.' Foolish leaf,
where do you go? Whence do the fresh leaves come? Where is this chaos
whose gulf you fear? See, your own self is in that force, interior and
hidden, acting on the tree which, through all generations of leaves,
knows neither birth nor death. And now tell me," Schopenhauer
concludes, as though he were about to pronounce a benediction, "tell
me, is man unlike the leaf?"
This doctrine, which teaches that through all there is one invariable,
identical, and equal force, is the great problem whose solution was
sought by Kant, and which he gave up in despair; it is the discovery
which makes of Schopenhauer one of the foremost thinkers of the
century, and one, it may be added without any unguarded enthusiasm,
which will suffice to carry his name into other ages, somewhat in the
same manner as the name of Columbus has descended to us.
"If we were to consider," he said, "the nature of this force which
admittedly moves the world, but whose psychological examination is so
little advanced that the most certain analytical results seem not
unlike a paradox, we should be astonished at this fundamental verity
which I have been the first to bring to light, and to which I have
given its true name,--Will. For what is the world but an enormous Will
constantly irrupting into life. Gravitation, electricity, heat, every
form of activity, from the fall of an apple to the foundation of a
republic, is but the expression of Will, and nothing more."
This doctrine of volition coincides, it may be noted, very perfectly
with that of evolution, and it was not difficult for Schopenhauer to
show that the more recent results of science were a confirmation of his
philosophy. In the "Parerga," which he wrote thirty years after the
publication of his chief work, he says that during the early stages of
the globe's formation, before the age of granite, the objectivity of
the Will-to-live was limited to the most inferior forms; also that the
forces were at that time engaged in a combat whose theatre was not
alone the surface of the globe, but its entire mass, a combat too
colossal for the imagination to grasp. When this Titan conflict of
chemical forces had ended, and the granite, like a tombstone, covered
the combatants, the Will-to-live, by a striking contrast, irrupted in
the peaceful world of plant and forest. This vegetable world
decarbonized the air, and prepared it for animal life. The objectivity
of Will then realized a new form,--the animal kingdom. Fish and
crustaceans filled the sea, gigantic reptiles covered the earth, and
gradually through innumerable forms, each more perfect than the last,
the Will-to-live ascended finally to man. This stage attained is, in
his opinion, destined to be the last, for with it is come the
possibility of the denial of the Will, through which the divine comedy
will end.
This possibility of the denial of the Will, and the ransom of the world
from its attendant misery thereby, will be explained later on, and for
the moment it will be sufficient to note that Schopenhauer refused to
admit that a being more intelligent than man could exist either here or
on any other planet, for with enlarged intelligence he would consider
life too deplorable to be supported for a single moment.
If, now, the foregoing arguments are admitted, and it is taken for
granted that there are two separate and distinct hemispheres, one
apparent and one real, one the world of perceptions and one the world
of Will, there must necessarily be some connection between the two,
some point at which they meet and join. This chasm Schopenhauer lightly
bridges over with those ideas of Plato which the Middle Ages
neglected, and which formed the banquet and the sustenance of the
Renaissance: in fact, the eternal yet ever fresh suggestions that
Nature offers to the artist, and which the sculptor with his chisel,
the poet with his pen, the painter with his brush, resuscitate and
explain anew.
It is, however, only in the purest contemplation that these suggestions
can be properly received, and it is, of course, in genius that a
preëminent capacity for such receptivity exists. For it is as if when
genius appears in an individual, a larger measure of the power of
knowledge falls to his lot than is necessary for the service of an
individual will, and this superfluity, being free, becomes, as it were,
the mirror of the inner nature of the world, or, as Carlyle puts it,
"the spiritual picture of Nature." "This," Schopenhauer notes
parenthetically, "explains the restless activity of the genius, for the
present can rarely satisfy him, because it does not fill his thoughts.
There is in him a ceaseless aspiration and desire for new and lofty
things, and a longing to meet and communicate with others of similar
status. The common mortal, on the other hand, filled with the hour,
ends in it, and finding everywhere his like enjoys that satisfaction in
daily life from which the genius is debarred."
The common mortal, the _bourgeois_, as it is the fashion to call him,
turned out as he is daily by the thousand, manufactured, it would seem,
to order, finds in his satisfied mediocrity no glimmer, even, of a
spark that can predispose him to disinterested observation. Whatever
arrests his attention does so only for the moment, and in all that
appears before him he seeks merely the general concept under which it
is to be brought, very much in the same manner as the indolent seek a
chair, which then interests them no further.
And yet it is unnecessary to pore over German metaphysics to know that
whoso can lose himself in Nature, and sink his own individuality
therein, finds that it has suddenly become a suggestion, which he has
absorbed, and which is now part of himself. It is in this sense that
Byron says:--
"Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?"
This theory, it is true, is not that of all great poets, many of whom,
as witness Shelley and Leopardi, did not see in the splendid face of
Nature that they could not be absolutely perishable, and so selfishly
mourned over their own weakness and her impassibility.
According to Schopenhauer, art should be strictly impersonal, and
contemplation as calm as a foretaste of Nirvâna, in which the
individual is effaced and only the pure knowing subject subsists. This
condition he praises with great wealth of adjective as the painless
state which Epicurus, of refined memory, celebrated as the highest
good, the bliss of the gods, for therein "man is freed from the hateful
yoke of Will, the penal servitude of daily life ceases as for a
Sabbath, the wheel of Ixion stands still." The cause of all this he is
at no loss to explain, and he does so, it may be added, in a manner
poetically logical and peculiar to himself. "Every desire is born of a
need, of a privation, or a suffering. When satisfied it is lulled, but
for one that is satisfied how many are unappeased! Desire, moreover, is
of long duration, its exigencies are infinite, while pleasure is brief
and narrowly measured. Even this pleasure is only an apparition,
another succeeds it; the first is a vanished illusion, the second an
illusion which lingers still. Nothing is capable of appeasing Will, nor
of permanently arresting it; the best we can do for ourselves is like
the alms tossed to a beggar, which in preserving his life to-day
prolongs his misery to-morrow. While, therefore, we are dominated by
desires and ruled by Will, so long as we give ourselves up to hopes
that delude and fears that persecute, we have neither repose nor
happiness. But when an accident, an interior harmony, lifting us for
the time from out the infinite torrent of desire, delivers the spirit
from the oppression of the Will, turns our attention from everything
that solicits it, and all things seem as freed from the allurements of
hope and personal interest, then repose, vainly pursued, yet ever
intangible, comes to us of itself, bearing with open hands the
plenitude of the gift of peace."
The fine arts, therefore, as well as philosophy, are at work on the
problem of existence. Every mind that has once rested in impersonal
contemplation of the world tends from that moment to some comprehension
of the mystery of beauty and the internal essence of all things; and it
is for this reason that every new work which grapples forcibly with any
actuality is one more answer to the question, What is life?
To this query every masterpiece replies, pertinently, but in its own
manner. Art, which speaks in the ingenuous tongue of intuition, and not
in the abstract speech of thought, answers the question with a passing
image, but not with a definite reply. But every great work, be it a
poem, a picture, a statue, or a play, answers still. Even music
replies, and more profoundly than anything else. Indeed, art offers to
him who questions an image born of intuition, which says, See, this is
life.
Briefly, then, contemplation brings with it that affranchisement of the
intelligence, which is not alone a release from the trammels of the
Will, but which is the law of art itself, and raises man out of misery
into the pure world of ideas.
In the treatment of this subject, which in the hands of other writers
has been productive of inexpressible weariness, Schopenhauer has given
himself no airs. In what has gone before there has been, it must be
admitted, no attempt to narrate history, and then pass it off as an
explanation of the Universe. He has gone to the root of the matter,
seized a fact and brought it to light, without any nauseous
accompaniment of "Absolutes" or "Supersensibles." In view of the
magnitude of the subject, it has been handled, I think, very simply,
and that perhaps for the reason that simplicity is the _cachet_ which
greatness lends to all its productions. If in these pages it has seemed
otherwise, the fault is not that of the master, but rather that of the
clerk.
The question as to what the world is has been considered, and the
answer conveyed that Will, the essence of all things, is a blind,
unconscious force which, after irrupting in inorganic life and passing
therefrom through the vegetable and animal kingdom, reaches its
culmination in man, and that the only relief from its oppressive yoke
is found in art and impersonal contemplation. Taking these premises for
granted, and admitting for a moment their corollary that life is a
restless pain, it will be found that the sombre conclusion which
follows therefrom has been deduced with an exactitude which is
comparable only to the precision of a prism decomposing light.
Literature is admittedly full of the embarrassments of transition, and
philosophy has naturally its attendant share. It is, of course, not
difficult for the metaphysician to say, This part of my work is
theoretical, and this, practical; but to give to the two that cohesion
which is necessary in the unfolding of a single, if voluminous, thought
is a feat not always performed with success. It is, therefore, no
little to Schopenhauer's credit that he triumphantly connected the two
in such wise that they seem as though fused in one, and after
disposing of the world at large was able to turn to life and its
attendant, pain.
Now in all grades of its manifestation, Will, he teaches, dispenses
entirely with any end or aim; it simply and ceaselessly strives, for
striving is its sole nature. As, however, any hindrance of this
striving, through an obstacle placed between it and its temporary aim,
is called suffering, and on the other hand the attainment of its end,
satisfaction, well-being, or happiness, it follows, if the obstacles it
meets outnumber the facilities it encounters, that having no final end
or aim, there can be no end and no measure of suffering.
But does pain outbalance happiness? The question is certainly complex,
and for that matter unanswerable save by a cumbersome mathematical
process from which the reader may well be spared. The optimist points
to the pleasures of life, the pessimist enumerates its trials. Each
judges according to his lights. Schopenhauer's opinion goes without the
telling, and as he gave his whole life to the subject his verdict may,
for the moment, be allowed to pass unchallenged. Still, if the question
is examined, no matter how casually, it will be seen, first, that there
is no sensibility in the plant and therefore no suffering; second, that
a certain small degree is manifested in the lowest types of animal
life; third, that the capacity to feel and suffer is still limited,
even in the case of the most intelligent insects; fourth, that pain of
an acute degree first appears with the nervous system of the
vertebrates; fifth, that it continues to increase in direct proportion
to the development of the intelligence; and, finally, that as
intelligence attains distinctness, pain advances with it, and what Mr.
Swinburne calls the gift of tears finds its supreme expression in man.
Truly, as Schopenhauer has expressed it, man is not a being to be
greatly envied. He is the concretion of a thousand necessities. His
life, as a rule, is a struggle for existence with the certainty of
defeat in the end, and when his existence is assured, there comes a
fight with the burden of life, an effort to kill time, and a vain
attempt to escape ennui.
Nor is ennui a minor evil. It is not every one who can get away from
himself. Schopenhauer could, it is true, but in so doing he noted that
its ravages depicted on the human countenance an expression of absolute
despair, and made beings who love one another as little as men do seek
each other eagerly. "It drives men," he said, "to the greatest
excesses, as does famine, its opposite extreme. Public precautions are
taken against it as against other calamities, hence the historical
_panem et circenses_. Want," he added, "is the scourge of the people as
ennui is that of fashionable life. In the middle classes ennui is
represented by the Sabbath, and want by the other days of the week."
In this way, between desire and attainment, human life rolls on. The
wish is, in its nature, pain, and satisfaction soon begets satiety. No
matter what nature and fortune may have done, no matter who a man may
be, nor what he may possess, the pain which is essential to life can
never be dodged. Efforts to banish suffering effect, if successful,
only a change in its form. In itself it is want or care for the
maintenance of life; and if in this form it is at last and with
difficulty removed, back it comes again in the shape of love, jealousy,
lust, envy, hatred, or ambition; and if it can gain entrance through
none of these avatars, it comes as simple boredom, against which we
strive as best we may. Even in this latter case, if at last we get the
upper hand, we shall hardly do so, Schopenhauer says, "without letting
pain in again in one of its earlier forms; and then the dance begins
afresh, for life, like a pendulum, swings ever backward and forward
between pain and ennui."
Depressing as this view of life may be, Schopenhauer draws attention to
an aspect of it from which a certain consolation may be derived, and
even a philosophic indifference to present ills be attained. Our
impatience at misfortune, he notes, arises very generally from the fact
that we regard it as having been caused by a chain of circumstances
which might easily have been different. As a rule, we make little, if
any, complaint over the ills that are necessary and universal; such,
for instance, as the advance of age, and the death which must claim us
all; on the contrary, it is the accidental nature of the sorrow that
gives its sting. But if we were to recognize that pain is inevitable
and essential to life, and that nothing depends on chance save only
the form in which it presents itself, and that consequently the present
suffering fills a place which without it would be occupied by another
which it has excluded,--then, from convictions of this nature, a
considerable amount of stoical equanimity would be produced, and the
amount of anxious care which now pervades the world would be notably
diminished. But fortifications of this description, however cunningly
devised, form no bulwark against pain itself; for pain, according to
Schopenhauer, is positive, the one thing that is felt; while on the
other hand, satisfaction, or, as it is termed, happiness, is a purely
negative condition. Against this theory it is unnecessary to bring to
bear any great battery of argument; many thinkers have disagreed with
him on this point, as they have also disagreed with his assertion that
pleasure is always preceded by a want. It is true, of course, that
unexpected pleasures have a delight whose value is entirely independent
of antecedent desire. But unexpected pleasures are rare; they do not
come to us every day, and when they do they cease to be pleasures;
indeed, their rarity may in this respect be looked upon as the
exception which confirms the rule. Ample proof, however, of the
negativity of happiness is found in art, and especially in poetry. Epic
and dramatic verse represent struggles, efforts, and combats for
happiness; but happiness itself, complete and enduring, is never
depicted. Up to the last scene the hero copes with dangers and
battleaxes difficulties, whereupon the curtain falls upon his
happiness, which, being completely negative, cannot be the subject of
art. The idyl, it is true, professes to treat of happiness, but in so
doing it blunders sadly, for the poet either finds his verse turning
beneath his hands into an insignificant epic made up of feeble sorrows,
trivial pleasures, and trifling efforts, or else it becomes merely a
description of the charm and beauty of Nature. The same thing,
Schopenhauer says, is noticeable in music. Melody is a deviation from
the keynote, to which, after many mutations, it at last returns; but
the keynote, which expresses "the satisfaction of the will" is, when
prolonged, perfectly monotonous, and wearisome in the extreme.
From the logic of these arguments it is clear that Voltaire was not
very far wrong when he said: "Happiness is but a dream, and only pain
is real. I have thought so for eighty-four years, and I know of no
better plan than to resign myself to the inevitable, and reflect that
flies were born to be devoured by spiders, and man to be consumed by
care."
To this conclusion the optimist will naturally object, but he does so
in the face of history and experience, either of which is quite
competent to prove that this world is far from being the best one
possible. If neither of them succeeds in so doing, then let him wander
through the hospitals, the cholera slums, the operating-rooms of the
surgeon, the prisons, the torture-chambers, the slave-kennels, the
battlefields, or any one of the numberless haunts of nameless misery;
or, if all of these are too far, or too inconvenient, let him take a
turn into one of the many factories where men and women, and even
infants, work from ten to fourteen hours a day at mechanical labor,
simply that they may continue to enjoy the exquisite delight of living.
Moreover, as Schopenhauer asks with grim irony, "Where did Dante find
the materials for his 'Inferno' if not from this world; and yet is not
his picture exhaustively satisfactory? To some minds it is even a
trifle overcharged; but look at his Paradise; when he attempted to
depict it he had nothing to guide him, this pleasant world could not
offer a single suggestion; and so, being obliged to say something, and
yet not knowing what to say, he palms off in place of a celestial
panorama the instruction and advice which he imagines himself as
receiving from Beatrice and the Saints."
Briefly, then, life, to the pessimist, is a motiveless desire, a
constant pain and continued struggle, followed by death, and so on, in
_secula seculorum_, until the planet's crust crumbles to dust.
Since, therefore, life is so deplorable, the deduction seems to follow
that it is better to take the poet's advice:--
"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better--not to be."
But here the question naturally arises, how is this annihilation to be
accomplished? Through a vulgar and commonplace suicide? Not at all.
Schopenhauer is far too logical to suggest a palliative so fruitless
and clap-trap as that. For suicide, far from being a denial of the will
to live, is one of its strongest affirmations. Paradoxical as it may
seem, the man who takes his own life really wants to live; what he does
not want are the misery and trials attendant on his particular
existence. He abolishes the individual, but not the race. The species
continues, and pain with it.
In what manner, then, can we decently rid ourselves, and all who would
otherwise follow, of the pangs and torments of life? Schopenhauer will
give the receipt in a moment; but to understand the method clearly, it
is necessary to take a glance at the metaphysics of love.
We are told by Dr. Frauenstadt that Schopenhauer considered this
portion of his philosophy to be "a pearl." A pearl it may be, but as
such it is not entirely suited to an Anglo-Saxon setting; nevertheless,
as it is important to gain some idea of what this clear-eyed recluse
thought of the delicate lever which disturbs the gravest interests, and
whose meshes entwine peer and peasant alike, a brief description of it
will not be entirely out of place.
By way of preface it may be said that, save Plato, no other philosopher
has cared to consider a subject so simple yet complex as this, and of
common accord it has been relinquished to the abuse of the poets and
the praise of the rhymesters. It may be, perhaps, that from its nature
it revolted at logic, and that the seekers for truth, in trying to
clutch it, resembled the horseman in the familiar picture who, over
ditches and dykes, pursues a phantom which floats always before him,
and yet is ever intangible. La Rochefoucauld, who was ready enough with
phrases, admitted that it was indefinable; a compatriot of his tried to
compass it with the epigram, "C'est l'égoïsme à deux." Balzac gave it
an escutcheon. Every one has had more or less to say about it; and as
some have said more than they thought, while others thought more than
they said, it has been beribboned with enough comparisons to form an
unportable volume, while its history, from Tatterdemalia to Marlborough
House, is written in blood as well as in books.
Love, however, is the basis of religion, the mainstay of ethics, as
well as the inspiration of lyric and epic verse. It is, moreover, the
principal subject of every dramatic, comic, and classic work in India,
Europe, and America, and the inexhaustible spring from whose waters the
fecund lands of fiction produce fresh crops more regularly than the
seasons. It is a subject never lacking in actuality, and yet one to
which each century has given a different color. It is recognized as a
disease, and recommended as a remedy. And yet what is it? There are
poets who have said it was an illusion; but however it may appear to
them, it is no illusion to the philosopher: far from it; its reality
and importance increase in the ratio of its ardor, and whether it turns
to the tragic or the comic, a love affair is to him, above all other
early aims, the one which presents the gravest aspects, and the one
most worthy of consideration; for all the passions and intrigues of
to-day, reduced to their simplest expression and divested of all
accompanying allurements, are nothing more nor less than the
combination of the future generation.
"It is through this frivolity," Schopenhauer says, "that the _dramatis
personæ_ are to appear on the stage when we have made our exit. The
existence of these future actors is absolutely conditioned on the
general instinct of love, while their nature and characteristics depend
on individual choice. Such is the whole problem. Love is the supreme
will to live, the genius of the species, and nature, being highly
strategic, covers itself, for the fulfillment of its aims, with a mask
of objective admiration, and deludes the individual so cleverly
therewith, that he takes that to be his own happiness which, in
reality, is but the maintenance of the species."
The love affairs of to-day, therefore, instead of representing
questions of personal joy or sorrow, are simply and solely a series of
grave meditations on the existence and composition of the future
generation. It is this grand preoccupation that causes the pathos and
sublimity of love. It is this that makes it so difficult to lend any
interest to a drama with which the question is not intermingled. It is
this that makes love an every-day matter, and yet an inexhaustible
topic. It is this that explains the gravity of the _rôle_ it plays, the
importance which it gives to the most trivial incidents, and above all,
it is this that creates its measureless ardor. To quote Madame
Ackermann:--
"Ces délires sacrés, ces désirs sans mesure,
Déchaînés dans vos flancs comme d'ardents essaims,
Ces transports, c'est déjà l'humanité future
Qui s'agite en vos seins."
However disinterested and ideal an affection may seem, however noble
and elevated an attachment may be, it is, from Schopenhauer's
standpoint, simply Will projecting itself into the creation of another
being; and the moment in which this new being rises from chaos into the
_punctum saliens_ of its existence is precisely that moment in which
two young people begin to fancy each other. It is in the innocent union
and first embrace of the eyes that the microbe originates, though, of
course, like other germs, it is fragile and prompt to disappear. In
fact, there are few phenomena more striking than the profoundly
serious, yet unconscious, manner in which two young people, meeting for
the first time, observe one another. This common examination, this
mutual study, is, as has been stated, the meditation of the genius of
the species, and its result determines the degree of their reciprocal
inclination.
In comedy and romance the sympathies of the spectator are invariably
excited at the spectacle of these two young people, and especially so
when they are discovered defending their affection, or, to speak more
exactly, the projects of the genius of the species, against the
hostility of their parents, who are solely occupied with their
individual interests. It is unquestionably for this reason that the
interest in plays and novels centres on the entrance of this serene
spirit, who, with his lawless aims and aspirations, threatens the peace
of the other actors, and usually digs deep graves for their happiness.
As a rule, he succeeds, and the climax, comformably with poetic
justice, satisfies the spectator, who then goes away, leaving the
lovers to their victory, and associating himself in the idea that at
last they are happy, whereas, according to Schopenhauer, they have, in
spite of the opposition of their parents, simply given themselves up as
a sacrifice to the good of the species.
In tragedies in which love is the mainspring, the lovers usually die,
because, as follows from the foregoing logic, they have been unable to
triumph over those designs of which they were but the instruments.
As Schopenhauer adds, however, a lover may become comic as well as
tragic, and this for the reason that in either case he is in the hands
of a higher power, which dominates him to such an extent that he is, so
to speak, carried out of himself, and his actions in consequence become
disproportioned to his character. "Hence it is that the higher forms
of love bring with them such poetic coloring, such transcendental and
supernatural elevation, that they seem to veil their true end and aim
from him completely. For the moment, he is animated by the genius of
the species. He has received a mission to found an indefinite series of
descendants, and, moreover, to endow them with a certain constitution,
and form them of certain elements which are only obtainable from him
and a particular woman. The feeling which he then has of acting in an
affair of great importance transports the lover to such superterrestial
heights, and garbs his material nature with such an appearance of
immateriality that, however prosaic he may generally be, his love at
once assumes a poetic aspect, a result which is often incompatible with
his dignity."
In brief, the instinct which guides an insect to a certain flower or
fruit, and which causes it to disregard any inconvenience or danger in
the attainment of its end, is precisely analogous to that sentiment
which every poet has tried to express, without ever exhausting the
topic. Indeed, the yearning of love which brings with it the idea that
union with a certain woman will be an infinite happiness, and that the
inability to obtain her will be productive of insufferable anguish,
cannot, according to Schopenhauer, be considered to have its origin in
the needs of the ephemeral individual; it is in fact but the sigh of
the genius of the species, who sees herein a unique opportunity of
realizing his aims, and who in consequence is violently agitated.
Inasmuch as love rests on an illusion of personal happiness, which the
supervising spirit is at little pains to evoke, so soon as the tribute
is paid the illusion vanishes, and the individual, left to his own
resources, is mystified at finding that so many sublime and heroic
efforts have resulted simply in a vulgar satisfaction, and that, taking
all things into consideration, he is no better off than he was before.
As a rule, Theseus once consoled, Ariadne is forsaken, and had
Petrarch's passion been requited his song would then have ceased, as
that of the bird does when once its eggs are in the nest.
Every love-match, then, is contracted in the interest of the future
generation, and not for the profit of the individual. The parties
imagine, it is true, that it is for their own happiness; but, as
Schopenhauer has carefully explained, owing to the instinctive illusion
which is the essence of love they soon discover that they are not
united to each other in any respect, and this fact becomes at once
evident when the illusion which first joined them has at last
disappeared. Hence it happens, Schopenhauer adds, that love-matches are
usually unhappy, for they but assure the presence of the next
generation at the expense of everything else, or, as the proverb runs,
"Quien se casa por amores ha de viver con dolores."
"If now," he concludes, "we turn our attention to the tumult of life,
we find that all men are occupied with its torments, we see them
uniting their efforts in a struggle with want and massing their
strength against misery, and yet there, in the thick of the fight, are
two lovers whose eyes meet, charged with desire! But why do they seem
so timid, why are their actions so mysterious? It is because they are
traitors who would perpetuate the pain which, without them, would soon
come to that end which they would prevent, as others have done before
them."
There can be but one objection to this novel theory, which, at least,
has the merit of being thoroughly logical, as well as that of
connecting a subject so intangible as love to the fundamental principle
of the whole doctrine, and that is that it leaves those higher and
purer realms of affection, of which most of us are conscious, almost
entirely unvisited. This objection, however, loses much of its force
when it is remembered that Schopenhauer gave to this division of his
subject the title of "Metaphysics of Love," and in so doing sought
solely to place the matter on a scientific basis. In this he has
undoubtedly succeeded, and his explanation, if characteristic, is not
for that reason necessarily unsound. In another essay,[9] which is
narrowly connected with the one in hand, he takes the reader from the
highest spheres of pure love to the foundation of ethics, and shows
that both are derived from an identical sentiment, which he calls
compassion.
And since grief is king, what better primate can he have than sympathy?
To the thinker who sees joy submerged by pain, and death rule
uncontested, what higher sentiment can come than that of pity?
Schopenhauer has, however, been very frequently blamed for giving this
as the foundation of morality; to many it has seemed too narrow and
incomplete, and an academy (that of Copenhagen) refused to crown his
essay, for that very reason. But whatever objections may be brought
against it, its originality at least is unattackable. In ancient
philosophy, ethics was a treatise of happiness; in modern works, it is
generally a doctrine of eternal salvation; to Schopenhauer, it is
neither; for if happiness is unobtainable, the subject is necessarily
untreatable from such a standpoint, and on the other hand, if morality
is practiced in the hope of future reward, or from fear of future
punishment, it can hardly be said to spring from any great purity of
intention. With such incentives it is but a doctrine of expediency, and
at best merely adapted to guide the more or less interested motives of
human action; but as the detection of an interested motive behind an
action admittedly suffices to destroy its moral value, it follows that
the criterion of an act of moral value must be the absence of any
egotistic or interested motive.
Schopenhauer points out that acts of this description are discernible
in the unostentatious works of charity, from which no possible reward
can accrue, and in which no personal interest is at work. "So soon," he
says, "as sympathy is awakened the dividing line which separates one
being from another is effaced. The welfare and misfortunes of another
are to the sympathizer as his own, his distress speaks to him and the
suffering is shared in common." Meanwhile this phenomenon, which he
sees to be of almost daily occurrence, is yet one which reason cannot
explain. All, even the most hard-hearted, have experienced it, and they
have done so very often intuitively and to their own great surprise.
Men, for instance, risk their lives spontaneously, without possible
hope of gain or applause, for a total stranger. England, some years
ago, paid twenty millions sterling to free the slaves in her colonies,
and the motive of that grandiose action can certainly not be attributed
to religion, for the New Testament does not contain a word against
slavery, though in the days to which it refers slavery was universal.
It is pity, then, according to Schopenhauer, which is the base of every
action that has a true moral value. "Indeed," he says, "the soundest,
the surest guarantee of morality is the compassionate sympathy that
unites us with everything that lives. Before it the casuist is dumb.
Whoso possesses it is incapable of causing the slightest harm or injury
to any one; rather to all will he be magnanimous, he will forgive, he
will assist, and each of his actions will be distinguished by its
justice and its charity." In brief, compassion "is the spontaneous
product of nature, which, while independent of religion and culture, is
yet so pervasive that everywhere it is confidently evoked, and nowhere
counted among the unknown gods. It is compassion that makes the mother
love best her feeblest child. Truly the man who possesses no compassion
is outside of humanity."
The idea that runs through the whole subject, and which is here noted
because its development leads to the logical climax of the entire
philosophy, is that all love is sympathy, or, rather, all pure love is
sympathy, and all love which is not sympathy is selfishness. Of course
combinations of the two are frequently met; genuine friendship, for
instance, is a mixture of both, the selfishness consisting in the
pleasure experienced in the presence of the friend, and the sympathy in
the participation in his joys and sorrows. With this theory as a
starting-point, Schopenhauer reduces every human action to one, or
sometimes to two, or at most three motives: the first is selfishness,
which seeks its own welfare; the second is the perversity or
viciousness which attacks the welfare of others; and the third is
compassion, which seeks their good. The egotist has but one sincere
desire, and that is the greatest possible amount of personal
well-being. To preserve his existence, to free it from pain and
privation, and even to possess every delight that he is capable of
imagining, such is his end and aim. Every obstacle between his
selfishness and his desires is an enemy to be suppressed. So far as
possible he would like to possess everything, enjoy everything,
dominate everything. His motto is, "All for me, nothing for you."
When, therefore, the power of the state is eluded, or becomes
momentarily paralyzed, all at once the riot of selfishness and
perversity begins. One has but to read the "Causes Célèbres," or the
history of anarchies, to see what selfishness and perversity are
capable of accomplishing when once their leash is loosed.
At the bottom of the social ladder is he whose desire for life is so
violent that he cares nothing for the rights of others, and for a small
personal advantage oppresses, robs, or kills. Above him is the man who
never violates the rights of others,--unless he has a tempting
opportunity, and can do so with every reasonable assurance of
safety,--the respectable citizen who pays his taxes and pew-rent, and
once in a while serves on the jury. On a higher level is he who,
possessing a considerable income, uses but little of it for himself and
gives the rest to the poor, the man who makes less distinction than is
usually made between himself and others. Such an one is as little
likely to let others starve while he himself has enough and to spare,
as another would be to hunger one day that he might eat more the next.
To a man of this description the veil of Mâyâ, which may be taken to
mean the veil of illusions, has become transparent. He recognizes
himself in every being, and consequently in the sufferer.
Let this veil of Mâyâ be lifted from the eyes of a man to such an
extent that he makes no distinction at all between himself and others,
and is not only highly benevolent, but ready at all times to sacrifice
himself for the common good; then he has in him the holiness of the
saint and the germ that may flower into renunciation. The phenomenon,
Schopenhauer says, by which this change is marked is the transition
from virtue to asceticism. In other words, it then no longer suffices
for him to love others as himself; there arises within him a horror of
the kernel and essence of the world, which recognizably is full of
misery, and of which his own existence is an expression, and thereupon
denying the nature that is in him, and ceasing to will anything, he
gives himself up to complete indifferentism to all things.
Such, in outline, is Schopenhauer's theory of ethics, which, starting
from the principle of kindness of heart, leads to the renunciation of
all things, and, curious as the _dénouement___ may appear, at last to
universal deliverance.
In earlier pages the world has been explained to be utterly
unsatisfactory, and it has been hinted that the suicide, were he
delivered of his suffering, would gladly rehabilitate himself with
life; for it is the form of life that the suicide repudiates, not life
itself. But life, to be scientifically annihilated, should be
abolished, not only in its suffering, but in its empty pleasures and
happiness as well; its entire inanity should be recognized, and the
whole root cut once and for all. In explaining in what manner this is
to be accomplished, Schopenhauer carries his reader _bon gré_, _mal
gré_, far off into the shadows of the Orient. On the one side is the
lethargy of India, on the other China drugged with opium, while above
all rises the fantasy of the East, the dogma of metempsychosis.
As has been seen, Schopenhauer holds that there is in every life an
indestructible principle. This belief he shares with the Buddhist, the
Brahmin, the ancient Druid, and the early Scandinavian; historically
speaking, the doctrine is so old that a wise Anglican is reported to
have judged it fatherless, motherless, and without genealogy. Properly
speaking, however, this creed does not now insist that there is a
transmigration of the soul, but rather, in accordance with recent
esoteric teaching, it implies simply that the fruit of good and evil
actions revives with the individual through a succession of lives,
until the evil is outbalanced, the good is paramount, and deliverance
is at last attained. In other words, the beautiful myth of the early
faith is superseded by an absurd and awkward palingenesia.
Schopenhauer gives the name of Will to that force which, in Indian
philosophy, is considered to resurrect with man across successive
lives, and with which the horror of ulterior existences reappears. It
is from this nightmare that we are summoned to awake, but in the
summons we are told that the awakening can only come with a recognition
of the true nature of the dream. The work to be accomplished,
therefore, is less physical than moral. We are not to strangle
ourselves in sleep, but to rise out of it in meditation.
"In man," says Schopenhauer, "the Will-to-live advances to
consciousness, and consequently to that point where it can readily
choose between its continuance or abolition. Man is the saviour, and
all nature awaits its redemption through him. He is at once the priest
and the victim."
If, therefore, in the succeeding generations the appetite for death has
been so highly cultivated, and compassion is so generally practiced,
that a widespread and united pity is felt for all things, then through
asceticism, which the reader may construe universal and absolute
chastity, that state of indifference will be produced in which subject
and object disappear, and--the sigh of the egoist Will once choked
thereby into a death-rattle--the world will be delivered from pain.
"It is this," Schopenhauer exclaims in his concluding paragraph, "that
the Hindus have expressed in the empty terms of Nirvâna, and
reabsorption in Brahma. We readily recognize that what remains after
the entire abolition of the Will is without effect on those in whom it
still works; but to those in whom it has been crushed, what is this
world of ours with its suns and stellar systems? Nothing."
In the preface to the second edition of the "Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung," Schopenhauer recommends that the work be read by the
light of his supplementary essays. This task, beyond demanding an
agility of pencil and some concentration, is otherwise one of the most
morbidly agreeable that can be suggested. The sensation that comes with
a first reading is that of an abrupt translation to the wonders of a
world which heretofore may have been dimly perceived, but which then
for the first time is visited and thoroughly explored. The perspective,
it is true, holds no Edens; in the distance there are no Utopias; but
when the journey is ended and the book laid aside, the peaks and
abysses to which the reader has been conducted stand steadfast in
memory, and the whole panorama of deception and pain groups itself in a
retrospect as sudden and clear as that which attends the last moments
of the drowning man.
And Schopenhauer is the least pedantic, and yet the most luminous of
ciceroni: in pages which Hugo would not disavow, and of which the
foregoing analysis can give at best but a bald and unsatisfactory idea,
he explains each height and ruin with an untiring verve, and with an
irony as keen and fundamental as Swift's. But beyond his charm as a
stylist, and his exhaustive knowledge of life, he claims attention
through his theory of the universal force, his originality in the
treatment of ethics, and the profound ingenuity with which he attaches
everything, from a globule to an adagio in B flat, to his general
system.
It is said that philosophy begins precisely where science ends; the
doctrine, therefore, which has just been considered is, in a measure,
impregnable to criticism. Reduced to its simplest expression, it
amounts briefly to this: an unknown principle--an _x_, which no term
can translate, but of which Will, taken in the widest sense of Force,
is the rendition the least inexact--explains the universe. The highest
manifestation of Will is man; any obstacle it encounters is pain. Pain
is the attendant of life. Man, however, duped by the instinct of love,
has nothing better to do than to prolong through his children the
sorrowful continuation of unhappy generations. The hope of a future
existence in a better world seems to be a consolation, but as a hope it
rests on faith. Since life is not a benefit, chaos is preferable.
Beyond suicide, which is not a philosophic solution, there are but two
remedies for the misery of life; one, a palliative, is found in art and
disinterested contemplation; the other, a specific, in asceticism or
absolute chastity. Were chastity universal, it would drain the source
of humanity, and pain would disappear; for if man is the highest
manifestation of Will, it is permissible to assume that, were he to die
out, the weaker reflections would pass away as the twilight vanishes
with the full light.
All great religions have praised asceticism, and in consequence it was
not difficult for Schopenhauer to cite, in support of his theory, a
number of texts from the gnostics, the early fathers of the church, the
thinkers, such as Angelius, Silesius, and Meister Eckhard, the mystics,
and the quietists, together with pertinent extracts from the Bible and
the sacred books of the Orient. But none of these authorities seem to
have grasped the principle which, according to Schopenhauer, lies at
the root of asceticism and constitutes its chief value. At best, they
have seen in it but the merit of obedience to a fantastic law, the
endurance of a gratuitous privation, or else they have blessed in
celibacy the exaltation of personal purity and the renunciation of
worldly pleasures. From the philosophic standpoint, however, the value
of asceticism consists in the fact that it leads to deliverance,
prepares the world for the annihilation of pain, and indicates the path
to be pursued. Through his labors and sympathy the apostle of charity
succeeds in saving from death a few families which, in consequence of
his kindness, are condemned to a long misery. The ascetic, on the other
hand, does far better; he preserves whole generations from life, and in
two or three instances very nearly succeeded in saving the world. "The
women," Schopenhauer says somewhere, "refused to join in the
enterprise, and that is why I hate them."
If asceticism were practiced by all men, it follows that pain, so far
as man is concerned, would cease in it. But is it permissible to assume
that with the disappearance of man the world will vanish with him--in
other words, if humanity dies out, that animality must necessarily
follow after?
It is here, if anywhere, that Schopenhauer has blundered; the world is
deplorably bad, let the optimist and thoughtless say what they will,
and it would undoubtedly be very advantageous to have the whole
universe tumble into sudden chaos; but that such a consummation is to
be brought about by voluntary asceticism is, in the present state of
society, and independent of the opposition of women, greatly to be
doubted.
Schopenhauer has denied that a being superior to man could exist; if,
then, the nineteenth century, which plumes itself on the mental
elevation and culture of the age, and in looking back at the ignorance
of earlier epochs considers itself the top of all creation,--if, then,
the nineteenth century, in its perspicacity, refuses such a solution,
there is little left for humanity to do save to bear the pains of life
as it may, or, better still, with the resignation which Leopardi long
ago suggested.
When, putting aside this eccentric theory of deliverance, the teaching
of Schopenhauer is reviewed, it will, according to the nature of the
reader, bring with it a warm approval or a horrified dissent. To some
he will appear like an incarnation of the Spirit of Truth; to others
like the skeleton in Goya's painting, which, leaning with a leer from
the tomb, scrawls on it the one word, Nada,--nothing.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: This distinction of Kant's is not strictly original. Its
germ is in Plato, and Voltaire set all Europe laughing at Maupertuis,
who had vaguely stated that "nous vivons dans un monde ou rien de ce
que nous apercevons ne ressemble à ce que nous apercevons." Whether
Kant was acquainted or not with Maupertuis' theory is, of course,
difficult to say; at any rate, he resurrected the doctrine, and
presented idealism for the first time in a logical form.]
[Footnote 9: "Das Fundament der Moral," contained in _Die beiden
Grundprobleme der Ethik_. Leipsic: Brockhaus.]