The Project Gutenberg eBook ofSchopenhauerThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: SchopenhauerAuthor: Margrieta BeerRelease date: October 18, 2014 [eBook #47136]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCHOPENHAUER ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: SchopenhauerAuthor: Margrieta BeerRelease date: October 18, 2014 [eBook #47136]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines
Title: Schopenhauer
Author: Margrieta Beer
Author: Margrieta Beer
Release date: October 18, 2014 [eBook #47136]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCHOPENHAUER ***
SchopenhauerSchopenhauer
BY MARGRIETA BEER, M.A.
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK67 LONG ACRE, W.C., AND EDINBURGHNEW YORK: DODGE PUBLISHING CO.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
INTRODUCTIONI.SCHOPENHAUER'S LIFEII.PESSIMISMIII.ARTIV.VIRTUEBIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX
Schopenhauer differs from most other philosophers in that he has influenced not only the development of the history of thought, the course along which modern philosophy has proceeded, but in that his views have been welcomed as an inspiration, accepted almost in the spirit of a religious faith by workers in quite other departments of life.
No philosopher has so directly touched and influenced the great art movements of modern times. It is now nearly one hundred years since the publication of his greatest work, and his philosophy is a more potent and vitalising force to-day than in his own lifetime. It has been a source of inspiration to artists and has directly stimulated their creative activity, probably more than any other abstract system has ever done.
Poetry has always been influenced subtly by philosophy. Spenser and Shelley are imbued through and through with the doctrines of Plato. Goethe wrote some of his finest work under the spell of Spinoza, and some of Wordsworth's deepest experiences were interpreted to him through the ideas of Kant. It is to all artists, but especially to musicians, that Schopenhauer makes his most intimate appeal. For in his system music plays a strangely important part, above and apartfrom all the other arts. In analysing its spiritual character, he endows it with mystic significance. One famous instance of this influence is that of Wagner. His acquaintance with Schopenhauer's philosophy marked a turning-point in his artistic life. It gave a tremendous stimulus to his musical productivity, and while under its influence he composed his greatest works.
Schopenhauer's system expresses, according to his own statement, only a single thought, viewed in different aspects. He considers it from the metaphysical, æsthetic, and ethical points of view. This fundamental thought, which lies at the root of his entire philosophy, is concerned with the significance of the will. The will alone gives the key to the understanding of man's existence. Every force in nature is to be regarded as will, and the inner reality of the universe is to be found only in will.
While it is especially to those who are concerned with the problems arising out of the function and significance of art that Schopenhauer offers such fruitful and fascinating suggestions, the other aspects of his system offer solutions in the sphere of ethics and metaphysics of almost equally vital importance. His insistence on the significance of instinct and intuition in all the lower and higher forms of life is of great importance in the history of philosophy. It is an aspect of the subject which until later times had been strangely neglected. This prominence which is given to instinct and intuition, is connected directly with his philosophy of the will.
Schopenhauer, unlike most philosophers, has always been read and appreciated by the general reader and student of life, as distinguished from the specialisedstudent of philosophy. His fundamental attitude towards philosophy explains this to a great extent. Notwithstanding his marked leaning towards mysticism, he brought philosophy down to earth, and into relation with, the actual facts of life. He exchanged abstractions for realities. Philosophy had always been far too much concerned, he maintained, with abstract conceptions, and the philosopher had tended too exclusively to be a mere man of books and learning. The true philosopher, on the contrary, should be a guide to fine living as well as to high thinking.
Philosophy should express the real life of things. But the deepest things in life are not known by way of the intellect, but are lived and felt. The profoundest truths of life we know intuitively and directly, with a deeper certainty than the understanding can give.
That Schopenhauer has a wider public than have most philosophers is due partly to his style. He writes in language so singularly clear and lucid, that it can be followed easily by the general reader, not specially trained in a technical philosophical vocabulary. Of all German philosophers he is the greatest from a literary point of view. "The true philosopher," he writes, "will always seek after light and clearness, and will endeavour to resemble a Swiss lake, which through its peacefulness is able to unite great depth with great clearness, the depth revealing itself precisely by the clearness, rather than a turbid, impetuous mountain torrent." Philosophers have not always given much heed to this counsel of perfection. Obscurity of expression is merely the cloak in which men seek to hide their poverty of thought and triteness of mind. "Everyone," says Schopenhauer, "who possesses a beautiful and rich mind will always express himself in the mostnatural, direct, and simple way, concerned to communicate his thoughts to others and thus relieve the loneliness that he must feel in such a world as this."
Schopenhauer is a temperamental pessimist. In words of glowing and passionate eloquence he sets out to prove that all life is essentially sorrow. From his earliest days he had been abnormally sensitive to the misery that lies beneath the surface of life. Pain is essential to life and cannot be evaded. If it can find entrance in no other form, then it comes in the sad, grey garments of tedium and ennui.
The purest joy in life is that which lifts us out of our daily existence, and transforms us into disinterested spectators of it. This "divine release from the common ways of men" can only be found through art. But even this release, which is accessible only to the few, increases the capacity for suffering.
The final and only permanent solution of life is to be found in the life of the saint. True morality passes through virtue, which is rooted in sympathy, into asceticism. Art gives a marvellous consolation in life, but renunciation and self-surrender offer a complete release from the terrors and evils of existence. The veil of Mâyâ—the web of illusion—is lifted from man's eyes. He now shudders at the pleasures which recognise the assertion of life, and attains to the state of voluntary renunciation, resignation, and true indifference. Buddhism, Schopenhauer maintained, comes nearest of all religions to expressing this truth. It is here that he shows how profoundly Indian philosophy and religion had influenced him.
Throughout his life Schopenhauer was aggressively hostile towards all contemporary philosophers. To some extent, no doubt, his own failure to obtain academicrecognition embittered him. But partly his attitude may be explained by the complete difference of method between them. Schopenhauer cares nothing at all about method. To Hegel and his contemporaries method was all-important. The historical method was the pathway which was followed with most enthusiasm at the time. It is especially for the historical method that Schopenhauer has the frankest contempt. Hegel and others were attempting to interpret present reality through history, seeking to show that through the slow process of history, unfolding itself in time, are revealed the organic principles which underlie the whole of life. Schopenhauer attaches practically no value to history as a highroad for philosophical inquiry. This way, he says, lie merely the dry bones of archæology and antiquarianism. To examine things historically is to look along a horizontal line. To think philosophically is to look along a vertical line. The latter is the rational and the more profound point of view. "What history narrates is in fact only the long, heavy, and confused dream of humanity." It is our inmost consciousness which is the real concern of the philosopher. "The true philosophy of history," he says, "consists in the insight into the causes of all these endless changes and their confusion. We have always before us the same even, unchanging nature, which to-day acts in the same way as yesterday. Thus it ought to recognise the identical in all events, in ancient as in modern times, in the East as in the West, and in spite of all difference in special circumstances, of costume and of custom, to see everywhere the same humanity. If one has read Herodotus, then in a philosophical regard one has read enough history. For everything is already there that makes up the subsequent history of the world."
That which is significant in itself, not in its relations, is to be found far more profoundly and distinctly in poetry than in history. There is, therefore, far more real, inner truth in poetry than in history. Aristotle held the same view, maintaining that poetry reveals a higher truth than history, for it strives to express the universal. "Poetry," he says, "is a more philosophical, and a higher thing than history."
In Schopenhauer's view, the true philosopher is the genius. His penetrative imagination will see farther and deeper than the learning of the mere scholar. The genius is a clear mirror of the inner nature of the universe. To him knowledge is the sun which reveals the world. His work may be regarded as an inspiration, as an interpretation of the spirit of beauty in art. He has been endowed by nature with a special faculty of inner vision, and uses his power to open the eyes of ordinary men. It is the genius who knows the inner nature of things, just as in Plato true philosophers are defined as "the lovers of the vision of truth, who are able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, and whose eyes are ever directed towards fixed and immutable principles." It is the genius, says Schopenhauer, who interprets his vision to the rest of mankind. He enables us to see the world through his eyes.
There was a wide difference, too, between Schopenhauer and other contemporary philosophers, in their attitude towards religion. Schopenhauer's freedom from academic fetters enabled him to steer an independent way. The German university professor was almost always dominated by the need for reconciling his philosophical theories with a theological creed. At times to square accounts between the two involvedconsiderable ingenuity, as in the case of Kant. To Schopenhauer, to whom orthodox religion had always been a mere form, such attempts savoured of hypocrisy. Hence he always speaks slightingly of "philosophy-professors," and throughout his writings he makes bitter attacks upon them. Hegel's work is described as three-fourths utter absurdity, and one quarter as paradox, and he himself alluded to as "that intellectual Caliban." Plato's contempt for the sophists stands on very much the same plane of thought.
In spite of this attitude there is much in Schopenhauer's system, which is closely akin to Christianity on its mystical side. In his ethical theory he shows extraordinary points of agreement with the mediæval mystics. Materialism was utterly alien to his spirit. Materialists, he said, possess neither humanities nor culture, and their point of view filled him with the Olympian laughter of the gods. He always maintained that his theory of pessimism was more truly Christian, and more closely in accord with the spirit of primitive Christianity than the shallow optimism which crept into the later developments of that system. Its ascetic spirit he considered the kernel of Christianity. Protestantism represented for him a falling away from the earlier and purer form, and a transition to shallow rationalism.
His thought was much influenced by ancient Indian philosophy, and especially by Buddhism. The Upanishads had been published in Germany in 1801 in a Latin translation from a Persian version of the Sanscrit original. In these treatises are set forth the general system of mystical pantheism, which grew out of the more theosophic elements of the Vedas. In reading them Schopenhauer immediately acknowledged a kindred spirit. In speaking of this work he says, "Howdoes everyone who by diligent reading has familiarised himself with this incomparable book, feel himself stirred to the innermost by that spirit. The mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted superstition, and all philosophy servile to that superstition. It is the most profitable and the most elevating reading which is possible in the world. It has been the consolation of my life, and will be the consolation of my death."
SCHOPENHAUER'S LIFE
Arthur Schopenhauer led the outwardly uneventful life of a scholar and a thinker, taking no part in public affairs. The great movements in European history, through which he lived, left him untroubled and unmoved in his scholar's seclusion. There is little therefore to chronicle with regard to the outer history of his life. It is the more easy to escape the criticism of Schopenhauer himself, who says that "those who, instead of studying the thoughts of a philosopher, make themselves acquainted with his life and history, are like people who instead of occupying themselves with a picture, are rather occupied with its frame, reflecting on the taste of its carving and the nature of its gilding."
The little that there is to tell is, however, of great significance with regard to the development of his thought. For of no philosopher can it be more truly said than of Schopenhauer, that his thought is the expression of his character.
Schopenhauer was born at Dantzig on February 22, 1788. He traced his descent through both parents to Dutch ancestors. The family had settled at Dantzig in the course of commerce. For several generations the head of the family had combined the career of a merchant with landed pursuits. Schopenhauer's great-grandfather, Andreas Schopenhauer, leased one of thelarge farms belonging to the municipality, while following the business of a merchant. His son Andreas acquired property near Dantzig, and there the father of the philosopher, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, was born. Some mental weakness seems to have been inherited. The eldest son of Andreas was an imbecile from his youth, and the other children, with the exception of Schopenhauer's father, all had some curious mental or moral twist. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, however, was a man of strong intelligence and character. He followed a merchant's career with great success, raising his firm to the first position in the town. He was a disciple of the school of Voltaire, read French and English literature, and had a keen admiration for English life and institutions. His wife, Johanna, belonged, too, to one of the leading families of Dantzig. She had been educated on broader lines than was usual for girls at the time, and had a love for art and letters which extended her interests beyond the domestic concerns of her home. Later on, during her widowhood, these were to find a wider field and opportunity, and she became a well-known authoress in the Germany of her day. She married in 1785, at the age of eighteen, being twenty years younger than her husband. The marriage was an unhappy one, owing to differences of temperament. There were two children of the marriage. They suffered for the incompatibilities of their parents. Both were burdened with abnormally strong desires for the pleasures of life, together with an extraordinary capacity for suffering.
Arthur, the future philosopher, was the first child of the marriage. He was given the name of Arthur to satisfy the cosmopolitanism of his father, the name being spelt alike in several languages. His earliestyears were spent at the country house near Dantzig, or at the farm, between the sea and the pine-woods, which had been rented many years before by his great-grandfather.
In 1793, when Schopenhauer was five years old, the family migrated to Hamburg. The "free city" of Dantzig, which had a constitution of its own, was annexed by Prussia in 1793, at the second partition of Poland, and Heinrich Schopenhauer was too stern a republican to adapt himself to the new rule. He carried on his business in Hamburg for the next twelve years, but never became a naturalised citizen.
He had resolved that his son should follow the family career of a merchant, and his education was planned accordingly on those lines. He was taken to France in 1797, and left at Havre for two years. For the next three years he attended a private school at Hamburg. During this time, discontent with his father's plans for his future was gradually ripening within him. To reconcile him, he was promised a trip to France and England, on the condition that he promised to give up his own desires and ambitions, and to be loyal to his father's wishes. The prospect of the journey was too alluring, and he gave the required promise. After six weeks had been spent in London, his parents left him at a boarding-school at Wimbledon. In letters to his mother, he complains of the mechanical instruction, the dreary Sunday services, and the tedious routine of the school. She, in reply, warns him not to give way to bombast and empty pathos.
He became proficient in English, and always held English character and intelligence in admiration, although he was impressed by the prevalent hypocrisy and the oppressive pietism of the time. He was busyalready recording his impressions, describing characteristically the feelings and ideas awakened in him rather than the actual facts and events. The travellers returned through France, from Geneva to Vienna, and thence to Berlin.
For about four months Schopenhauer now worked in a Dantzig office, trying to acquire the rudiments of a business training. When almost seventeen, he entered the employment of a firm in Hamburg. He himself has recorded that there never was a worse clerk in a merchant's office. In his leisure, and during office hours whenever possible, he was reading voraciously.
In 1805 his father died, whether by accident or by his own hand remains uncertain. For two years longer Schopenhauer stuck to his hated task, out of loyalty to his father, and the promise made him some years earlier. But at last he could stifle his ambitions and yearnings towards a purely intellectual life no longer, and he obtained his mother's consent to leave his office, and to begin preparation for a learned career.
His mother meanwhile, with her daughter Adèle, had left Hamburg and settled at Weimar, at that time the intellectual centre of Germany. Goethe was here the sun round which the lesser lights of the artistic and intellectual world revolved. At the age of forty, Johanna Schopenhauer had entered on a new life, and was finding scope and free development for untried capabilities. She played a prominent part in the social life of the place, and her receptions were remarkable for the circle she gathered round her. Goethe himself was a frequent visitor there. She also took part in the theatrical performances, which were so conspicuous a feature of the life at Weimar. With help and encouragement from Fernow, a distinguished scholar andart critic, she began to write, and published with considerable popular success travel sketches, art biographies, and novels. Her daughter, in describing their life at Weimar, tells how her mother experienced ever fresh delight in intercourse with the famous men living there. "She was liked, her society was agreeable. Her pleasing manners made her house a centre of intellectual activity, where everyone felt at home, and freely contributed the best he had to bring." Besides Goethe, Schlegel, Grimm, Wieland and others were frequent guests under her roof. Freed from his hated bondage, Schopenhauer now left Hamburg and entered the gymnasium, or grammar school, at Gotha, but a lampoon on one of the masters was so resented that he was obliged to leave. He then came to Weimar, at his mother's suggestion, and worked at classics in the house of a well-known scholar, who had a real enthusiasm for all things Greek. Something of his spirit he communicated to his pupil, and the passion for Greek art and thought grew into a moulding principle in Schopenhauer's views of life and religion. At the same time that he was entering into the spirit of classical literature, he was cultivating his musical ability, and thus feeling his way towards a full and intense understanding of the art, which entered later with such significance into the development of his philosophy. He was striving to realise an ideal of the fullest and most complete culture, in which not only the life of thought, but also the life of art should find consummate satisfaction.
The estrangement between his mother and himself began to widen now that they were thrown constantly together. By arrangement, he dined daily with her, and came to her receptions. But Schopenhauer wastoo uncontrolled in his temper, and too uncompromising in his egoism to make an agreeable companion. His mother, driven to write to him, asserts that his constant grumbling, gloomy looks, and intolerant dogmatism depress her. It is necessary to her happiness to know that he is happy, but not necessary that she should be a witness to it. Therefore, if they are to agree they must consent to live apart. Both mother and son were bent on self-development, and in character were too dissimilar to understand each other. Schopenhauer was jealous, uncontrolled in his moods, and boorish in his manners. That all-consuming egoism, which all his life spoiled his relations with everyone with whom he came in contact, made a congenial family life impossible. He resented his mother's freedom and independence, and insulted her friends. In a way that is very characteristic of him, he generalises from his own personal experience, and in his views on women we find reflected all the bitterness which had grown round the relations between himself and his mother.
In 1809 he attained his majority, and received his share of his father's fortune, amounting to about £150 a year. He was now independent, and could pursue the career he had marked out for himself. He valued all his life the liberty which this competency secured him. A draft dedication, intended for the second edition ofThe World as Will and Idea, was addressed "to themanesof my father. Noble, beneficent spirit! to whom I owe everything that I am.... As thou didst bring into the world a son such as I am, thou didst also make provision that in a world like this, such a son should be able to subsist and to develop himself.... In my mind the tendency to its only proper vocation was too decidedly implanted to let medo violence to my nature, and so to subjugate it that, recking nought of existence in general, and active only for my personal existence, it should find its sole task in procuring daily bread.... Thou seemest to have foreseen that thy son, thou proud republican, could not possess the talent to compete in cringing before ministers and councillors, Mæcenases, and their advisers, basely to beg for the hard-earned piece of bread, or to flatter self-conceited commonplaceness, and humbly join himself to the eulogistic retinue of bungling charlatans.... That I could expand the forces nature gave me and apply them to their destined purpose, that I could follow my natural instinct and think and work for beings without number, while no one does anything for me, for that I thank thee, my father, thank thy activity, prudence, thrift, and provision for the future."
In 1809 he entered the University of Göttingen as a student of medicine. In his second year he changed his course to philosophy. Wieland, the poet, on the occasion of a visit from Schopenhauer, tried to dissuade him from philosophy as a career. The reply was, "Life is a ticklish business. I have decided to spend it in reflecting on it."
In 1811 Schopenhauer left Göttingen, and entered the University of Berlin. Here, too, he gave special attention to natural science. Throughout his notebooks are scattered critical remarks on his teachers and their lectures. Fichte especially was a butt for his sarcasms. Against a statement of Schleiermacher's, that "No man can be a philosopher without being religious," he writes, "No man who is religious takes to philosophy: he does not need it."
The Napoleonic wars were at this time disorganisingthe whole of Europe. Berlin was in the hands of a French garrison. But after the disastrous campaign of Napoleon in Russia, the entire nation rose against the invader. University classes were broken up. Fichte stayed behind to nurse the wounded, and died next year at his post. Schopenhauer, a prey to fears, which tormented him all his life, fled for safety to Dresden. He settled finally at Rudolstadt, and wrote there an essay, to qualify for the degree of doctor of philosophy at Jena. This he obtained, and his essay was published asA Philosophical Treatise on the Four-fold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. This work he describes in his later books as a preliminary part of his system, which must be studied if the remainder is to be understood. It is written entirely under the influence of Kant. The title refers to the four branches of knowledge: physical science, mathematics, logic, and ethics.
After the publication of his book, Schopenhauer returned to Weimar, and stayed for a few months with his mother. The experiment resulted in complete estrangement. He was overbearing and dogmatic, insulting his mother's friends, and censorious towards herself. She wrote to him again, to avoid an unpleasant personal interview, and complained of his contemptuous bearing and peremptory manner. He left Weimar and never saw his mother again, although she lived for twenty-four years after their separation. It is a curious commentary on his relations to his parents, that his highest praise of his father lay in the fact that he had, by his thrift, left his son an adequate income; and that his main censure on his mother is that she spends her money too negligently.
His visits to his mother at Weimar were of considerableimportance in the subsequent development of his thought, for it was there that he made the acquaintance, not only of Goethe, who influenced him profoundly for a time, but also of F. Mayer, the orientalist, who directed his attention to the philosophical literature of ancient India. This literature left a permanent mark upon his mind.
For the next four years he lived at Dresden. In 1816 he published an essayOn Vision and Colours, which has reference to the controversy which Goethe was waging on the theory of light. Schopenhauer's theory is fantastic. It is not submitted to experimental evidence, and rests, as he admits, on "intuitive" certainty.
This early work is hardly in the direct line of the development of Schopenhauer's thought. It is really a deviation, for which Goethe's all-compelling influence is responsible. Goethe was at first inclined to regard Schopenhauer as an opponent, for the essay is rather a transformation of Goethe's theory than an expansion of it.
His residence at Dresden was the best he could have chosen from the point of view of his own system of philosophy. Here he could study better than in almost any other town of Europe the works of art, in which he was to see a revelation of the meaning of life. The art collections of the town are among the most famous in Europe, and the music, both operatic and orchestral, was then, as now, of the highest quality. In this home of art, Schopenhauer's great system was now taking shape.
During his daily walks along the banks of the Elbe, he was thinking out his theories, making notes occasionally in a note-book, and then striding on againwith the rapid pace by which he was recognised even as an old man.
More and more strongly it was borne in upon him that "inward discord is the very law of human nature." All his life his thoughts had struck the note of genuine pessimism. He was always in revolt against the pain and misery that lie hidden beneath the surface of life. That this pessimistic bias was fundamentally one of temperament, there can be no doubt. In letters to him from his mother, we find her constantly urging him, even as a child, to look upon the brighter side of things. In a letter written to him in 1806, she writes, "I could tell you things that would make your hair stand on end, but I refrain, for I know how you love to brood over human misery in any case."
Even in happiness and success he recognised illusion. Everywhere in nature we see strife and conflict. One species preys upon another. The "will to live" necessarily expresses itself as a struggle.
Hegel at this time reigned supreme in the kingdom of philosophy. It was hardly possible to escape his influence. Schopenhauer, in striving to give expression to a system which would lay bare the real inner nature of our life and destiny, was at the same time protesting passionately against the Hegelian view. It was as a protest against the all-powerful idealism of this philosophy that his system was directed in the first place. He represents a reaction against the absorption of everything in reason. As opposed to this view, Schopenhauer urged the priority of the will and the feelings as the fundamental factors in determining the mental life.
The will is the reality behind all life. The intellect is merely a tool in the service of the will. It isimpossible to find in reason a complete knowledge of the essence of the world. A merely intellectual philosophy of life is bound to be thin and hollow, and we should aim rather at a clear and direct insight into life.
Now the will, into which every form of life can be resolved, is the source of all human misery and unhappiness. The only way in which men can free themselves from the bondage of the will, and throw off its yoke, is by looking upon beauty. It is in art that eternal truth is revealed with a directness and certainty to which science never attains. This theory is connected with the Platonic theory of Ideas. The real inner nature of things, the Ideas in the Platonic sense, are revealed in creative and imaginative art. The faculty of vision, which enables men to divine this reality behind appearances, and to interpret it to others, is the gift of the artistic genius. He "understands the half-uttered speech of nature, and articulates clearly what she only stammered forth." The man of genius produces works of art by intuitive insight. He sees through the outer shell to the inner significance that lies at the heart of things. Genius is the faculty of renouncing entirely one's own personality for the time being, so as to become clear vision of the world, free of subjectivity. The genius must have imagination, above all things, in order to see in things not that which nature has actually made, but that which she endeavoured to make, but could not.
Art, however, does not deliver us permanently from life, but only for moments. It is therefore not a path out of life, but only an occasional consolation in life.
It is the saint, who through the surrender of all willing, through the intentional mortification of his own desires, attains to true resignation. Happinessand unhappiness become then a matter of indifference, and the spell of the illusion, which held us chained in the bonds of this world, is broken for ever.
These were the views which found expression in Schopenhauer's great work,The World as Will and Idea, which was finished in 1818. He found a publisher in Brockhaus of Leipsic. While the work was going through the press, he attacked his publisher with such violent rudeness, that Brockhaus wrote declining all further correspondence with one "whose letters in their supreme coarseness and rusticity savour more of the cabman than of the philosopher."
The work appeared when Schopenhauer was thirty years of age, an extraordinarily early date at which to produce so complete and elaborate a system of philosophy. In this work the outlines of his whole system are permanently fixed. The whole contains, he says, but a single thought. That thought exhibits itself as metaphysics, æsthetics, and ethics. He wrote later many essays and supplements, but these all go towards confirmation and expansion of his earlier work. For the rest of his life he was repeating his original theories, with infinite variation in expression. This is entirely in accord with his own theory of age. At thirty, he maintained, the intellectual and moral endowment has reached its highest development. All that is done later is to vary and expand the main principles already laid down.
His book fell still-born from the press. Twenty years later he succeeded in getting his publishers to undertake a second edition, but this too received but scant recognition. Schopenhauer had built great hopes on his work, and his disappointment was bitter when no word of notice greeted its appearance. "I dread silenceabout my system, as a burnt child dreads the fire," he wrote on one occasion. When bringing his manuscript to the notice of the publisher, he had written that the work "would hereafter be the source of a hundred other books." He confided to a disciple that upon completing the work, he had felt so convinced that he had solved the enigma of the world, that he had thought of having his signet-ring carved with the image of the sphinx throwing herself down the abyss. "My philosophy," he wrote, "is the real solution of the enigma of the world. In this sense it may be called a revelation."
Before the book appeared, Schopenhauer travelled to Italy. He first spent some weeks in Venice, where Byron was living at the time. The two, however, did not meet. He then set out for Rome, by way of Bologna and Florence, and there he spent the winter. His time was spent mostly in the art collections, and in the study of Italian. He kept, as he always did in travelling, a diary, recording not so much his observations on things seen, as his moods and moralisings on them.
In May of the following year, as he was returning home, he received the news of the bankruptcy of the Dantzig house in which almost the entire means of his mother and his sister were invested. He himself had a far smaller amount at stake. The business arrangements connected with the winding-up of the firm, which his mother accepted, were not to Schopenhauer's taste, and the estrangement between himself and his relatives now became permanent. He showed his usual promptness to suspect evil, and his angry accusations were so bitter, that a silence of eleven years fell between himself and his mother and sister. His struggle with the firm in question lasted for two years. Schopenhauer cameoff triumphant financially, his capital with interest being paid in full, whereas the other creditors obtained only thirty per cent.
His great work having now been launched in the philosophical world, Schopenhauer turned his thoughts to the chances of an academic appointment. After many inquiries he decided finally on Berlin, and made an application. Specimen copies of his published works were sent in, and a private trial lecture delivered. Here in 1820 he began his career as assistant lecturer, and a course of lectures was announced, of six hours a week, on philosophy in general. He chose as his lecture hour the very time at which Hegel delivered his principal course, thinking to enter into direct competition with him, and carry off his students. His hopes, however, misled him. The students were not to be beguiled away from the omnipotent Hegel, and Schopenhauer's course was a complete failure. He was not a good lecturer, and the course fell through before the end of the term. The lectures were never again delivered.
The six years he spent in Berlin were not in other respects happy ones. He was on bad terms with all his colleagues, and even in his private life he contrived to bring worry and legal trouble upon himself. In a small entrance hall, common ground to himself and another lodger, he, one day, found three women engaged in conversation. He demanded their withdrawal. Two complied, but one, a sempstress lodging in the same house, refused. Thereupon Schopenhauer, stick in hand, threw her forcibly twice out of the house. She fell, and on the following day brought her case before the court. After six months, the verdict went in Schopenhauer's favour, but an appeal was lodged, and, in his absence, the court inflicted a fine of twenty thalers,as compensation for injuries inflicted. Some months later the sempstress brought a further action. She claimed that her injuries were more serious than had first appeared, and that she was now permanently incapacitated for work. Schopenhauer was condemned to pay her sixty thalers a year as aliment, and five-sixths of the costs of the case. This sum he paid until the time of her death, twenty years later. On her death certificate he wrote, "obit anus, abit onus." The episode throws light on the character of the philosopher, with its marked strain of coarseness and ill-controlled passion.
Meanwhile, Schopenhauer continued to philosophise, still hoping against hope for the university professorship, which never came, but sustained by immense self-confidence in the importance of his message. He lived at Berlin in absolute seclusion. Social life had no attractions for him. He was a constant visitor to the theatre, the opera-house, and the concert-room, and at home his flute was a constant diversion. These were his chief distractions.
From time to time the thought of marriage had entered into his plans, but his habits of solitude were growing stronger, and his cynical views on women were obtaining an ever firmer hold on his mind. His nature was strongly sensual, and intermittent amorous experience is not the best school in which to foster the growth of fine feeling or noble thoughts on the relations of the sexes. It is not surprising to find, therefore, in his views on women the unmistakable stamp of his personal experience, a fatal blindness to all but the physical side of sex. The subject is not one that he passes over with indifference, for it amounts almost to an obsession with him. He left behind him notes onlove and marriage, which were held by his literary executor to be unfit for publication, and these were burned accordingly.
It was during these years at Berlin, embittered by the lack of recognition of his philosophical work, and by his failure in the academic world, that his attacks on university professors grew so virulent. He attributed his failure in both respects to conspiracy on the part of those in power. His attacks on Hegel grew ever fiercer.
In 1829 he was anxious to undertake a translation into English of Kant's chief works. He wrote to the publishers, urging his claims, saying "a century may pass before there shall again meet in the same head so much Kantian philosophy with so much English, as happen to dwell together in mine." The proposal came to nothing, and Kant'sCritiquehad to wait for nearly ten years longer before it appeared in an English form.
In 1831 the cholera broke out in Berlin, and Schopenhauer immediately took to flight. Hegel was one of the victims of this outbreak. In one of his later works, Schopenhauer describes how he had been moved to leave Berlin, on the entry of the cholera, by means of a dream. He had dreamed of a little schoolfellow and playmate, who died in childhood, "It may have been," he says, "of hypothetical truth, a warning in short, that if I had remained, I should have died of the cholera. Immediately after my arrival in Frankfurt, I was the subject of a perfectly distinct apparition, as I believe, of my parents, and signifying that I should survive my mother, who was still alive; my father, already deceased, carried a light in his hand." This is significant, as showing Schopenhauer's belief in the supernatural, and in mystical influences.
After leaving Berlin, Schopenhauer settled at Frankfurt,and with the exception of one year, which was spent at Mannheim, he lived there until his death twenty-seven years later. For twenty years after coming to Frankfurt he lived in entire isolation. Now and again, at rare intervals, an article from his pen appeared, but this is the only sign of life. We hear nothing of his personal life during this period. Friends he seems to have had none, and all personal intercourse with acquaintances invariably came to an abrupt end, owing to his intolerant attitude towards those who dared to disagree with any of his views.
Only when he reaches the verge of old age do we once again have some record of him. This latter part of his life was spent with unvaried regularity. His chief occupation and solace is philosophy. His daily routine was mapped out, according to a regular plan, which hardly varied from day to day. He worked during the forenoon for three or four hours. At noon he enjoyed half an hour's relaxation on the flute. He dined daily at a hotel. After an hour's rest, the afternoon was given up to lighter literature. His favourite authors, among poets, were Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Calderon. The study of the great classical writers was all his life his greatest delight. The degradation in style of contemporary literature, which he constantly bemoaned, he held to be due largely to the neglect of classical literature. "Without Latin," he wrote, "a man must be content to be counted amongst the vulgar." He regretted the disuse of the Latin language as a means of communication between scholars. Apart altogether from the educational value of the classics, he thought no other literature afforded the same refreshment and enjoyment for the mind. To take one of the classics in one's hand, even for halfan hour, is to feel refreshed, purified, elevated, and strengthened, exactly as if one had drunk from a fresh rock spring.
In the afternoon, whatever the weather, Schopenhauer took his daily walk, together with his dog, his invariable companion. The two were well-known figures in Frankfurt, as they took their customary exercise together. Schopenhauer's devotion to his dog was boundless. For the animal world altogether he had a special tenderness, pitying animals as the tortured souls of the earth, and holding that in all essentials they are the same as man. He condemned vivisection, on the ground that animals have rights.
For two hours he took his customary walk, at a rapid pace, in accordance with his theory that quick movement is essential to health. Then he visited the reading-room of the town, never omitting to look through theTimes. The evening was spent frequently at the theatre, or in the concert-room. In his later years, his growing deafness robbed him of much of the pleasure which he had always won from music. On returning home, he read for an hour, and then retired to rest. All his life he was afraid of robbers, and took extraordinary precautions against them. He slept invariably with loaded weapons by his bedside, and his valuables were hidden away with great ingenuity in various corners of his rooms. He believed that a thinker needed more than the ordinary amount of sleep to recuperate after the day's labours. His rule of life was modelled on that of Kant, but of Kant's early rising he strongly disapproved, believing it to be a reckless waste of vital energy.
Thus the latter part of his life is occupied with careful rules for the preservation of his health, which wasnaturally robust. The contradiction is at once obvious between his actual mode of life and his own moral ideal, as set forth in his works. Some of his most eloquent writing is on the subject of holiness, attained through renunciation and self-denial. Poverty, chastity, and constant mortification of the will are the ways along which man must travel to gain the highest moral solution of life. Schopenhauer was perfectly conscious of this contradiction between his ideals and his own way of life. But, he says, it is just as little needful that a saint should be a philosopher, as that a philosopher should be a saint. In the same way, it is not necessary that a perfectly beautiful man should be a great sculptor, or that a great sculptor should himself be a beautiful man. It is a strange demand, that a moralist should teach no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.
After 1818, whenThe World as Will and Ideaappeared, he published nothing further until 1836. In that year, a small book calledOn the Will in Natureappeared. It was described on the title-page as "a discussion of the corroborations which the philosophy of the author has, since its first appearance, received at the hands of empirical science." During these eighteen years, in which no new work of his was published, he had been collecting from all that he read, or saw, or heard, everything that could in any way be brought to bear as evidence towards the proof of his main theories and principles. Especially had he been on the alert with regard to scientific investigation, believing that his own sceptical generation would be most strongly influenced by anything that science could bring forward as confirmation of his metaphysical principles. Physics, he thought, had arrived at the point where it touchesmetaphysics. He was now confident that the time for his philosophy was ripening. But in spite of this confidence, the book met with no more recognition than had his previous works.
In 1838 he competed successfully for a prize offered by the Scientific Society of Drontheim, in Norway, for the best essay on the question "whether free-will could be proved from the evidence of consciousness." The subject could not have been more happily chosen to suit him. His essay won the prize, and he was elected a member of the Society. He obtained permission from the Society to publish his essay in Germany.
Meanwhile he was competing for another prize, offered by the Royal Danish Academy of the Sciences, at Copenhagen, on the subject of the sources or the basis of morality. He was confident of success, and wrote to the Academy asking that the award might be speedily made public, as he proposed to publish his essay along with the one which had been successful in Norway. His confidence was premature, for when the Danish Academy made known its decision, it announced that Schopenhauer's essay was the only one sent in, but that it was unworthy of the prize on several grounds, one of which was, that several of the chief philosophers had been treated with contempt.
From this time his rage against the three philosophers, Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling, knows no bounds. He attributed his failure to win recognition to a conspiracy among them and their followers. His writings abound in violent invective against them. In several ways there are points of contact between the system of Schopenhauer and that of Hegel, but Schopenhauer refused to admit any kinship between them.
His two treatises were published together, as he hadintended. They appeared in 1841 asThe Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics. These two problems are the freedom of the will and the basis of morality. The treatment is little more than an expansion of the theories set forth in his chief work. He finds the roots of morality in sympathy. The sense of brotherhood, which binds together individual and individual, and welds them into an organic whole, is the foundation on which all the moral sentiments are built. All goodness, love, virtue, and nobility of character spring from the same source, from sympathy, which is the same in its nature as pure love. Beyond the egoism, which is fostered by the world around us, there exists also the principle of altruism, impelling men to self-sacrifice, unselfishness, and devotion.
The second edition ofThe World as Will and Idea, which appeared in 1844, seemed at first as likely to fail of attaining recognition as the earlier one. But a change was now at hand. The reign of optimistic pantheism was approaching its end in Germany. The lofty idealism, which was the strength of the dominant school of thought, and which found political expression in the revolutionary movements of 1848, was now followed by a wave of reaction. The democratic movement, after obtaining some temporary triumphs, was checked completely for the time, and a wave of weariness and discouragement passed over the country. Schopenhauer looked on, while Frankfurt was torn violently asunder in the throes of its revolution. His sentiments were against the democratic party, and he seems to have feared, above all else, the possibility of losing his private means. In letters written at this time to his friends, Schopenhauer expresses his dislike and disapproval of the great national movement of 1848. Hewas a thorough-going individualist, and the movement, which stirred to the depths the finest natures of the time, found no response in Schopenhauer's heart. His room was used by Austrian soldiers, who shot from the windows upon the democrats below.
His political views are expressed again in his will, made in 1852, in which Schopenhauer left the greater part of his estate to be spent for the benefit of the soldiers who had been wounded at Berlin, in 1818, in defence of the royal party against the democratic revolutionaries. In his view, the State exists only to secure safety of persons and property. It is a strange error, he says, to attribute to the State any moral function. It is to be regarded merely as the night-watchman, who protects us from thieves and robbers.
The German Parliament, which sat at Frankfurt, had but a short-lived existence. In the reaction which followed, Schopenhauer's philosophy found an open door. Disciples attached themselves gradually to the philosopher, and by degrees his system gained ground at home and abroad.
The work which won for him more popularity than any other, wasParerga and Paralipomena(Chips and Scraps), published in 1851. The work had been declined by three publishers before a Berlin firm agreed to publish, without any payment to the author. The book consists of essays of a very heterogeneous kind, and of varying length. Most of the chief problems discussed in his larger works are treated again in the essays. Religion, education, archæology, Sanscrit, style, noise, ghosts, and immortality are a few of the subjects dealt with. Schopenhauer's reading was wide. His quotations range freely over oriental, classical, and modern literature.
The success which followed the publication of thisbook was reflected on the earlier works, and it was now possible to bring out further editions. Schopenhauer's delight at this tardy recognition was unbounded. Every scrap of applause was gathered and absorbed with eagerness. In his letters during this period, everyone who differs from him is denounced as a charlatan and a windbag. Everyone who says anything at all similar is attacked as a plagiarist. Every adversary is moved by the meanest motives. So virulent is his abuse, and so coarse his language, that words in his letters have sometimes to be changed for an initial. Nothing short of adulation, could satisfy his hungry vanity. Even when the universities at last acknowledged him, and offered a prize for the best exposition and criticism of his system, he was enraged at the award of the prize to a student who treated him as of more importance in a literary than in a philosophical capacity. Praise of any other philosophy than his own filled him with bitterness. His correspondence with Frauenstadt, Lindner, and Asher is full of such weakness. It may be doubted whether any great man ever left behind him letters of so trifling a nature, so steeped in vanity and so resentful of any breath of criticism.
He was active to the end of his life, though the first fine rapture of his passionate love for all that is best in art was dimmed inevitably with the passing years. There is a pathetic reference in a letter to this dulling of his power of vision. "In the time," he writes, "when my spirit was at its zenith, whatever object my eye rested upon made revelations to me. Now that I am old, it may happen that I stand in front of Raphael's Madonna, and she says nothing to me."
He died suddenly, in 1860, at the age of seventy-two. The stone which marks his grave bears as inscription the sole words "Arthur Schopenhauer."
PESSIMISM
Schopenhauer's system is set forth in all its fulness in his great work,The World as Will and Idea. All that he wrote after the appearance of this book was confirmation and expansion of the theories already laid down. It differs from his earlier books in method. He no longer follows academic lines. He looks upon the work as a revelation of the meaning of life, based on a clear and direct intuition into life, and the style shapes itself accordingly. Metaphor frequently takes the place of argument, and his theories are developed in a flow of passionate eloquence, contrasting remarkably with the severer methods of the ordinary metaphysician.
Schopenhauer takes as his starting-point certain theories from the philosophies of Plato and Kant. Things, as we know them in experience, said Kant, are made up partly of forms or moulds, which are in the mind, and partly of something outside the mind. That which we know, our actual experience, is a combination of the two elements, the subjective and the objective element. That part of experience which lies outside the mind, the reality, the thing-in-itself or the noumenon in philosophical language, we can never know. For in order to be known by us, it has to run into the forms or moulds supplied by the mind, and in this transition its nature has been changed. To know it as it is, before it enters into contact with our minds, is impossible. That weappear to have objective knowledge is therefore a deception and an illusion.
Schopenhauer accepts Kant's analysis of experience, but denies that the thing-in-itself is unknowable. For that which is real in our experience is not outside us altogether, as in Kant's theory. It lies within ourselves; it is the only real and essential part of our nature, and we have a direct knowledge of it. This reality Schopenhauer finds in the will. Now the will is fully known to us through internal perception, through intuition. It is the real, inner nature of everything in the world. It affords the key to the knowledge of the inmost being of the whole of nature. It is the kernel of every individual thing, and also of the whole universe.
It is important to note, that Schopenhauer's use of the word "will" is far wider than that of common usage. It includes not only conscious desire, but also unconscious instinct, and the forces of inorganic nature. He recognises will not only in the existences which resemble our own, in men and animals, but also in the force which germinates and vegetates in the plant, the force through which the crystal is formed, that by which the magnet turns to the north pole, the force which appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, decomposition and combination, and lastly even as gravitation, which draws the stone to the earth and the earth to the sun. All these in their inner nature are identical. It is the same force in every manifestation of nature, as in each preconsidered action of man. The difference is merely one of degree.
The body is the most real thing for everyone. If we analyse the reality of this body, we find nothing but the will. With this its reality is exhausted. The wordwill, like a magic spell, he says, reveals the inmost being of all nature. Spinoza says, that if a stone, which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own will. Schopenhauer adds that the stone would be right. The impulse given it, is for the stone what the motive is for us. All blindly impelling force, all forces which act in nature in accordance with universal laws, are equally in their inner nature to be recognised as will. It is everywhere one and the same, "just as the first dim light of dawn must share the name of sunlight with the rays of the full midday."
Now the will expresses itself necessarily as a struggle. Everywhere in nature we see strife, conflict, and alternation of victory. Every grade of will fights for the matter, the space, and the time of the others. For each desires to express its own inmost nature. Nature exists only through such struggle. This universal conflict is most distinctly visible in the animal kingdom. For animals have the whole of the vegetable kingdom for their food, and even within the animal kingdom every beast is the prey and the food of another. Each animal can maintain its existence only by the constant destruction of some other life.
This is the "will to live" which everywhere preys upon itself, until finally the human race regards nature as a manufactory for its own use. This strife manifests itself just as characteristically in the lower grades of will,e.g.the ivy which encircles the oak until the tree withers as if choked, the parasite which fastens itself on the animal and kills it. Even crude matter has its existence only in the strife of conflicting forces.
Man has need of the beasts for his support, the beasts in their turn have need of each other as well as plants,which in their turn require the ground, water, and chemical elements and their combinations. Thus in nature everything preys on some other form of life. For the will must live on itself; there exists nothing beside it, and it is a hungry will.
This theory of the will is connected by Schopenhauer with pessimism. Eternal becoming, endless flux characterises the inner nature of the will. In the human race this character of the will is most clearly marked. All our endeavours and desires delude us by presenting their satisfaction as the final end of will. But as soon as we attain our desires, they no longer appear the same. They soon grow stale and are forgotten, and then are thrown aside as useless illusions. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises, which vanish like optical delusions, as soon as we have allowed ourselves to be mocked by them. We are fortunate if there still remains something to wish for and to strive after, that the game may be kept up of constant transition from desire to satisfaction, and from satisfaction to a new desire.
Happiness, therefore, always lies in the future, or else in the past. The present, Schopenhauer compares to a small dark cloud, which the wind drives over the sunny plain. Before and behind it all is bright, but the cloud itself always casts a shadow. The present is always insufficient, the future is uncertain, and the past irrevocable.
The will strives always, for striving is its real nature. No attainment of the goal can put an end to this constant striving. It is not susceptible, therefore, of any final satisfaction, for in itself it goes on for ever. As in the life of the plant, so in the life of all men. There is the same restless, unsatisfied striving, a ceaselessmovement through ever-ascending forms, until finally the seed becomes a new starting-point. This is repeatedad infinitum, nowhere an end, nowhere a final satisfaction, nowhere a resting-place. No possible satisfaction in the world can suffice to still the cravings of the will, to set a goal to its infinite aspirations, and to fill the bottomless abyss of its heart.
The hindrance of this striving, through an obstacle, we call suffering; the attainment of its temporary end is well-being or happiness. But as there is no final end of striving, there is no measure and end of suffering. In proportion as knowledge attains to distinctness, as consciousness ascends in the scale of organic life, pain increases also. It reaches its highest capacity, therefore, in man. The more intelligence a man has, the greater his capacity for suffering; the man who is gifted with genius suffers most of all. Suffering is in the very nature of all life, and the ceaseless efforts which we make to banish it succeed only in making it change its form. Yet we pursue our lives, absorbed in the interests of the moment, just as we blow out a soap bubble as large as possible, although we know perfectly well that it will burst. Willing or striving may be compared to an unquenchable thirst. Every act of willing presupposes a want. The basis of all willing is need or deficiency. The nature of man, therefore, is subject to pain originally and through its very nature.
If, on the other hand, man lacks objects of desire, being deprived of them by too easy satisfaction, then a terrible emptiness and sense of boredom, comes over him. His very existence becomes an unbearable burden to him. Thus life swings like a pendulum backwards and forwards between pain and boredom. Men haveexpressed this truth oddly, says Schopenhauer, in transferring all pain and torments to hell, and in leaving what remains, that is, boredom, for heaven. Man is of all animals the most full of wants and needs. He is a concretion of a thousand necessities. Driven by these, he wanders through life, uncertain about everything except his own need and misery. The care for the maintenance of his existence occupies, as a rule, the whole of human life. A second claim, that of the reproduction of the species, is related directly to this. At the same time, he is threatened from all sides by different kinds of dangers, from which it requires constant watchfulness to escape. "With cautious steps and casting anxious glances round him, he pursues his path, for a thousand accidents and a thousand enemies lie in wait for him. Thus he went while yet a savage, thus he goes in civilised life. There is no security for him."
The majority of men wage a constant battle for their very existence, with nothing before them but the certainty of losing it at last. Man's greatest care in avoiding the rocks and whirlpools of life, only bring him nearer at every step to the greatest, inevitable, and irremediable shipwreck of death. This is the final goal of the laborious voyage.
Whatever nature and fortune may have done, whoever a man be, and whatever he may possess, the pain of life cannot be cast off. Excessive joy and excessive suffering always occur in the same person, for they condition each other reciprocally, and are conditioned by great activity of the mind. Error and delusion lie at the foundation of keen joy or grief. Joy rests on the delusion that lasting satisfaction has been found for the desires. The inevitable result is that when thedelusion vanishes, we pay for it with pain as bitter as the joy was keen. The greater the height from which we drop, the more severe the fall.
For the most part we close our minds to the knowledge that happiness is a delusion. We strive unweariedly from wish to wish, and from desire to desire. It is incredible how meaningless when viewed from without, how dull and unenlightened by intellect when felt from within, is the course of life of the great mass of men. It is a weary longing and complaining, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life to death, accompanied only by trivial thoughts. Such men go like clockwork, without knowing the reason why. The life of every individual, if we survey it as a whole, is always a tragedy, but looked at in detail, it has all the character of a comedy. Everyone who has awakened from the first dream of youth, who has reflected on his own experience and on that of others, must conclude inevitably that this human world is the kingdom of chance and error, which rule without mercy in great things and in small. Everything better struggles through only with difficulty. That which is noble and wise seldom attains to expression. The absurd and the perverse in the sphere of thought, the dull and tasteless in the sphere of art, the wicked and deceitful in the sphere of action, assert a supremacy which is rarely disturbed.
Nothing external has power to deliver man from this dominion of woe. In vain does he make to himself gods, in order to get from them by prayers and flattery what can be accomplished only by his own will-power.
The most beautiful part of life, its purest joy, is pure knowledge. It is removed from all willing, and lifts us out of real existence. This relief, however, is grantedonly to a few, because it demands rare talents and rare opportunities. Even the few, to whom it comes only as a passing dream, are made susceptible of far greater suffering than duller minds can ever feel. They are placed in lonely isolation by their nature, which is different from that of others. To the great mass of men, purely intellectual pleasures are not accessible. They are almost incapable of the joys which lie in pure knowledge. Their lives are given up to willing.
If we could bring clearly to a man's sight the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is exposed, he would be seized with horror. The brevity of life may be the best quality it possesses.
All happiness is negative in character, and never positive. Only pain and want can be felt positively. Happiness is merely the absence of pain, for it follows upon the satisfaction of a wish. Some want or need is the condition which precedes every pleasure. But with the satisfaction, the wish, and therefore the pleasure, cease. The satisfaction can never be more than deliverance from a pain or want. We observe that the days of our life were happy after they have given place to unhappy ones. In proportion as pleasures increase, the capacity for them decreases. What is customary is no longer felt as a pleasure. Achievement is difficult, but when attained it is nothing but deliverance from some sorrow or want. Therefore we value our blessings and advantages only when we have lost them, for the deprivation, the need, is the positive factor.
Man's real existence is only in the present, and the present is slipping ever into the past. There is thus a constant transition into death. The future is quite uncertain, and always short. Our existence, therefore, is a constant hurrying of the present, into the dead past,a constant dying. On the physical side, the life of the body is but an ever-postponed death. In the end death must conquer, and he only plays for a little with his prey before he swallows it up.
With such intensity did Schopenhauer feel that pessimism was the only possible conclusion, that he maintained that optimism was not only absurd, but really a wicked way of thought. For optimism is a bitter mockery of the unspeakable suffering of humanity. He revolted against the theory of Leibnitz, who maintained that this is the best of all possible worlds. It is, on the contrary, he declared, the worst of all possible worlds. Optimism is at bottom the unmerited self-praise of the will to live, the real originator of the world, which views itself complacently in its works. It is not only a false, but also a pernicious doctrine. For it presents life to us as a desirable condition, and happiness as its end. Everyone believes that he has a just claim to happiness and pleasure, and if these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he is wronged. It is far more correct to regard misery and suffering, crowned by death, as the end of our life, for it is these which lead to the denial of the will to live. It is difficult to conceive how men can deceive themselves and be persuaded that life is there to be thankfully enjoyed, and that man exists in order to be happy. The constant illusion and disillusion seem intended to awaken the conviction, that nothing at all is worth our striving, our efforts, or our struggles, and that all good things are but empty vanity. The truth is, he says, we ought to be wretched and we are.
The world is a hell, which surpasses that of Dante. One need look only at man's treatment of his fellow-men.
Schopenhauer points to the children, who are sentinto factories to work there daily for long hours, performing day after day the same mechanical task. This, he adds, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. Everyone would have declined the "gift" of life, if he could have seen it and tested it beforehand. But life has never been chosen freely. Everyone would retire from the struggle gladly, but want and boredom are the whips which keep the top spinning. Every individual bears the stamp of a forced condition. Inwardly weary, he longs for rest, but yet he must press forward. All movement is forced, and men are pushed from behind. It is not life that tempts them on, but necessity that drives them forward.
Suicide is no solution of the problem of life. It is not to be regarded as a crime, as in the code of modern society. But there is a valid moral reason against it, in that it substitutes for the real emancipation from the world of suffering, a merely apparent one. So far from being a denial of the will, suicide is indeed a strong assertion of the will. The suicide destroys merely the individual manifestation of life. The wilful destruction of the single existence is a vain and foolish act. The suicide gives up living, because he cannot give up willing. He denies the individual only, not the species. There is a more adequate way of conquering life than by destroying it, which Schopenhauer expounds when he deals with the ethical aspect of his philosophy.