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The Philosophy of Disenchantment

by Edgar Saltus · English · Gutenberg #40079 · 389,559 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Philosophy of Disenchantment

Author: Edgar Saltus


        
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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISENCHANTMENT ***

By the same Author.

BALZAC.

A STUDY.

_With a Bibliography of Balzac's
Writings, and a Portrait._

Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.25.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

_Publishers_,

BOSTON.




THE PHILOSOPHY OF
DISENCHANTMENT

BY

EDGAR EVERTSON SALTUS


In Arkadien geboren sind wir Alle
                    SCHILLER

[Illustration]

BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street,
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1887


Copyright, 1885,
BY EDGAR EVERTSON SALTUS.

_All rights reserved._

_The Riverside Press, Cambridge:_
Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.




CONTENTS.


                                         PAGE

     CHAPTER I.

THE GENESIS OF DISENCHANTMENT               1

     CHAPTER II.

THE HIGH PRIEST OF PESSIMISM               36

     CHAPTER III.

THE SPHINX'S RIDDLE                        77

     CHAPTER IV.

THE BORDERLANDS OF HAPPINESS              124

     CHAPTER V.

THE GREAT QUIETUS                         163

     CHAPTER VI.

IS LIFE AN AFFLICTION?                    208




THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISENCHANTMENT.




CHAPTER I.

THE GENESIS OF DISENCHANTMENT.


The trite and commonplace question of contentment and dissatisfaction
is a topic which is not only of every-day interest, but one which in
recent years has so claimed the attention of thinkers, that they have
broadly divided mankind into those who accept life off-hand, as a more
or less pleasing possession, and those who resolutely look the gift in
the mouth and say it is not worth the having.

Viewed simply as systems of thought, the first of these two divisions
is evidently contemporaneous with humanity, while the second will be
found to be of purely modern origin; for from the earliest times man,
admittedly and with but few exceptions, has been ever accustomed to
regard this world as the best one possible, and through nearly every
creed and sect he has considered happiness somewhat in the light of an
inviolable birthright.

Within the last half century, however, there has come into being a new
school, which, in denying the possibility of any happiness, holds as
first principle that the world is a theatre of misery in which, were
the choice accorded, it would be preferable not to be born at all.

In stating that this view of life is of distinctly modern origin, it
should be understood that it is so only in the systematic form which it
has recently assumed, for individual expressions of discontent have
been handed down from remote ages, and any one who cared to rummage
through the dust-bins of literature would find material enough to
compile a dictionary of pessimistic quotation.

For these pages but little rummaging will be attempted, but as the
proper presentation of the subject demands a brief account of the ideas
and opinions in which it was cradled, a momentary examination of
general literature will not, it is believed, cause any after-reproach
of time misspent.

To begin, then, with Greece, whose literature has precedence over all
others, it will be remembered that in former days, when the citizen
expended the greater part of his activity for the common good, the
poets in like manner sang of national topics, the gods, the heroes, and
the charms of love. There was, therefore, little opportunity for the
expression of purely personal ideas, and the whole background of the
poetry of antiquity is in consequence brilliant with optimistic
effect. Nevertheless, here and there, a few complaints crop out from
time to time. Homer, for instance, says that man is the unhappiest
wight that ever breathed or strutted, and describes his ephemeral
existence in a wail of gloomy hexameters.

Then, too, there is the touching Orphean distich, which runs:--

     "From thy smile, O Jove, sprang the gods,
     But man was born of thy sorrow."

Pindar in one of his graceful odes compared men to the shadows of a
dream, while the familiar quotation, "Whom the gods love die young,"
comes to us straight from Menander.

With the peculiar melancholy of genius, that in those favored days
seems more a presentiment than the expression of a general conception,
Sophocles, in his last tragedy, says that not to be born at all is the
greatest of all possible benefits, but inasmuch as man has appeared on
earth, the very best thing he can do is to hurry back where he came
from.

In spite, too, of the general tendency of thought, sentiments not
dissimilar are to be found in Æschylus and Euripides, while something
of this instinctive pessimism was expanded into a quaint and national
custom by the Thracians, who, according to Herodotus, met birth with
lamentations, but greeted death with salvos and welcoming festivals.

With but few exceptions the early philosophers considered death not as
a misfortune, but as an advantage. Empedocles taught that the sojourn
on earth was one of vexatious torment, an opinion in which he was
firmly supported by Heraclitus, and even Plato, whose general drift of
thought was grandly optimistic, said in the "Apology," "If death is the
withdrawal of every sensation, if it is like a sleep which no dream
disturbs, what an incomparable blessing it must be! for let any one
select a night passed in undisturbed and entire rest, and compare it
with the other nights and days that have filled his existence, and then
from his conscience let him answer how many nights and days he has
known which have been sweeter and more agreeable than that. For my part
I am sure that not the ordinary individual alone, but even the great
King of Persia would find such days and nights most easy to enumerate."

The doctrine of Epicurus held, in substance, that the moment it was no
longer possible to delight the senses death became a benefit, and
suicide a crowning act of wisdom. The teaching of the Socratic school
and its offshoots amounted, in brief, to the idea that the only
admissible aim of life was the pursuit and attainment of absolute
knowledge. Absolute knowledge, however, being found unattainable, the
logical culmination of their doctrine was delivered by Hegesias, in
Alexandria, in the third century before the Christian era. This
disciple of Socrates argued that as there was a limit to the knowable,
and happiness was a pure illusion, a further prolongation of existence
was useless. "Life seems pleasing only to the fool," he stated; "the
wise regard it with indifference, and consider death just as
acceptable." "Death," he added, "is as good as life; it is but a
supreme renunciation in which man is freed from idle complaints and
long deceptions. Life is full of pain, and the pangs of the flesh gnaw
at the mind and rout its calm. In countless ways fate intercepts and
thwarts our hopes. Contentment is not to be relied on, and even wisdom
cannot preserve us from the treachery and insecurity of the
perceptions. Since happiness, then, is intangible we should cease to
pursue it, and take for our goal the absence of pain; this condition,"
he explained, "is best obtained in making ourselves indifferent to
every object of desire and every cause of dislike, and above all to
life itself. In any event," he concluded, "death is advantageous in
this, it takes us not from blessings but from evil."[1]

This curious mixture of pessimism and theology was, it is said,
delivered with such charm of persuasive grace and eloquence that
several of his listeners put his ideas into instant practice, and that
the city might be preserved from the contagion of suicide, King Ptolemy
felt himself obliged to prevent this seductive misanthrope from
delivering any further harangues.

Literature has the same tendency to repeat itself as history, and as
the Romans took much of their culture and many of their ideas from
Greece, the tone of their principal writers is only dissimilar to those
already quoted in that with the fall of their religion, the decline of
the empire and the universal intoxication of the senses, the pessimist
element became somewhat accentuated. It would be an idle task, however,
to attempt to cite even a fraction of the cheerless distress which
pervades the Roman classics, and it will perhaps suffice for the moment
to note but a passage or two, which bear directly upon the subject.

Seneca, for instance, whose insight was as clear and whose
understanding was as unclouded as any writer with whom the world is
acquainted, sent his letters down the centuries freighted with such
ideas as these: "Death is nature's most admirable invention." "There is
no need to complain of particular grievances, for life in its entirety
is lamentable." "No one would accept life were it not received in
ignorance of what it is."

Pliny, also, is very quotable. "Nature's most pleasing invention," he
says, "is brevity of life." And he adds, "No mortal is happy, for even
if there is no other cause for discontent there is at least the fear of
possible misfortune."

Then, too, Petronius, the poet of the Roman orgy, opening and closing
his veins, toying with death, as with a last and supreme delight, is of
familiar, if repulsive, memory.

English literature is naturally as well stocked with individual
expressions of distaste for existence as that of Rome. The poets,
nearly one and all, from Chaucer to Rossetti, have told their sorrow in
a variety of more or less polished metre, and even Macpherson was
careful, in dowering his century with another bard, to put thoughts
into Ossian's verse which would not have been unfitting in a Greek
chorus.

In speaking of the world, Chaucer had already said,--

     "Here is no home, here is but a wilderness,"

when Sir Thomas Wyatt, enlarging on the theme, repeated,--

     "Wherefore come death and let me dye."

The delicate muse of Samuel Fletcher found--

     "Nothing's so dainty sweet, as lovely melancholy,"

and Shakespeare's depressing lines on the value of life are familiar to
every schoolboy.

Dryden wrote,--

     "When I consider life, 't is all a cheat;
     Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit,
     Trust on and think to-morrow will repay;
     To-morrow's falser than the former day."

All of which was afterwards summed up in the well-known line,--

     "Man never _is_ but always _to be_ blessed,"

while Thomson noted--

     ... "all the thousand, nameless ills
     That one incessant struggle render life."

Keats, and especially Byron, wrote stanza after stanza of enervating
sadness. Moore's dear gazelle is nowadays a familiar comparison.
Shelley's tremulous sensibility forbade his finding any charm in life,
and we none of us need to be reminded that Poe's soul was sorrow-laden.

But the poets are not alone in their tale of the deceptions of life;
the moralists and essayists, too, have added their quota to the general
budget, and it is not simply the value of life that has been questioned
by many of the best writers; there has been also a certain surprise
expressed that man should care to live at all. Indeed, the "I see no
necessity" of the wit, to the beggar imploring aid that he might live,
is the epigram of the thoughts of a hundred scholars.

In France, pessimism cannot be said to have been ever regarded
otherwise than as an intellectual curiosity. The Frenchman, it is true,
not infrequently lapses into a cynical indifference; yet the value of
life is as a rule so evident to him, that he seldom vouchsafes more
than a passing shrug to any theory of disparagement. In the first
place, death, to which the hat is gravely raised, has never been in
France a polite or welcome topic; moreover, French literature, while
lawless enough in other respects, has left its readers generally
unprepared to view the world as a fiasco, in which misery is the one
immense success. The trouvères and troubadours sang to the mediæval
châtelaine little else than the praise of love, with here and there the
account of some combat, to show what they might do were they put to
the test. Later, Villon told gently of the _neiges d'antan_, Ronsard
aimed a dart or two at fate, and Rabelais's laugh was sometimes very
near to tears; but, broadly speaking, the French asked of their writers
little else than wit,--if they could not give them that, then should
they hold their peace.

The delicate irony of Candide had, therefore, when appreciated,
something almost novel in its savor; and, indeed, it may fairly be said
that it was not until the blight of Byron had been cheerfully
translated, that the French were in any measure prepared to understand
Rolla and the pathetic beauties of De Musset's verse. Pascal,
Helvetius, and other writers of desultory depression had of course
already appeared. Maupertuis had found no difficulty in showing that
life held more pain than pleasure, while Chamfort's conclusions on the
same subject were as luminous as they were gloomy; and yet it is
difficult to say that the gall with which these authors dashed their
pages served otherwise than as a condiment to fresher and less flavored
works. Baudelaire, the poet of boredom, praying for a new vice that
should wrest life into some semblance of reality, was in consequence
almost a novelty, and not a perfectly satisfactory one at that. It is
therefore only within the last ten years or so that pessimism has in
any wise attracted the notice of French thinkers, and the attention
which has recently been paid to it is due partly to Leconte de Lisle,
and partly to a surge of German thought.

During the eighteenth century the majority of the scholars who
represented the culture of Germany were faithfully following the
optimist theories of Leibnitz and Wolf. The doctrine that the world was
the best one possible, supported as it was by official theology and
strictly in accord with the deism of Pope and Paley, was very generally
and unhesitatingly accepted. Indeed, there is no apparent reason why it
should not have been. The Minnesingers doubtless had formulated some
few complaints, but then these literary vagrants had already begun to
form part of mythology, and besides, poets are all more or less prone
to discontent and voluble of sorrow. Beyond the classics of Greece and
Rome there was, therefore, no precedent for pessimistic thought. German
literature, strictly speaking, did not begin until Lessing's advent,
and before that the theatre, with its Hans Wurst and its Pickleherring,
had offered only a succession of the broadest farce.

The calm and quiet which the Germans then enjoyed was ruffled, if at
all, only by some confused echoes of the _obiter dicta_ which
Voltaire's royal disciple was pleased to disseminate, but it is
probable that the better part of this ferocious gayety was drowned in
crossing the Rhine, and, in any event, it was too delicately pungent to
do more than disturb the placid current of their thought.

Later, when Kant appeared, the effect of his philosophy was very much
like a successful treatment of cataract on the eyes of the whole
nation. "Happiness," he insisted in the "Kritik der Urtheilskraft,"
"has never been attained by man, for he is unable to find contentment
in any possession or enjoyment, ... and were he called upon to fashion
a system of happiness for his fellows he would be unable to do so, for
happiness is in its essence intangible." "No one," he added elsewhere,
"has a right conception of life who would care to prolong it beyond its
natural duration, for it would then be only the continuation of an
already tiresome struggle."

After this the teaching of Leibnitz slowly disappeared, and though a
certain amount of optimism necessarily subsisted, the tendency of
thought veered to the opposite direction. Fichte, Kant's immediate
successor, declared, in direct contradiction to Leibnitz, that this
world was the worst one possible, and was only consoled by thinking he
could raise himself by the aid of pure thought into the felicity of the
"supersensible." "Men," he says, "in the vehement pursuit of happiness
grasp at the first object which offers to them any prospect of
satisfaction, but immediately they turn an introspective eye and ask,
'Am I happy?' and at once from their innermost being a voice answers
distinctly, 'No, you are as poor and as miserable as before.' Then they
think it was the object that deceived them, and turn precipitately to
another. But the second holds as little satisfaction as the first....
Wandering then through life, restless and tormented, at each
successive station they think that happiness dwells at the next, but
when they reach it happiness is no longer there. In whatever position
they may find themselves there is always another one which they discern
from afar, and which but to touch, they think, is to find the wished
delight, but when the goal is reached discontent has followed on the
way and stands in haunting constancy before them."[2]

Schelling expressed himself more guardedly. As professional pantheist,
he seemed to think that anything not rigidly vague and inaccessible was
inconsistent with his philosophy. Still there was probably a secret
revolt, some propelling impulse to deny his own syllogisms, and to
bathe for once in some clear stream of common sense. In the
"Nachtwachen," which he published under the pseudonym of Bonaventura,
this incentive is evidently, though unsuccessfully, at work. It may be
that the force of habit was too strong, but at any rate this rhapsody,
which was intended to be a confession of the combat that he had waged
with his belief, and a recognition of the immedicable misery of life,
brings with it something of that impression of delirium which Poe and
Doré not infrequently suggest.

Nor was Hegel hostile to pessimism; he regarded it as an inevitable
phase of universal evolution, and indeed its dawn as a science had then
already broken.

Meanwhile the poets had not been idle. Herder and Schiller had already
attested the bitterness of life to unreluctant ears, and the number of
suicides that were directly traceable to the appearance of Werther and
his sorrows was instructively large. This phase of sentimentalism,
which immediately preceded the riotous rebirth of the Romantic school,
was not without its influence on Heine's verse, and in some measure
affected the literary tone of the day.

It would, however, be erroneous to suppose that the poets of this epoch
were more agitated by the impression of universal worthlessness of life
than were their classic predecessors. The distress of Werther, as that
of Lara and of Rolla, was not the pain of suffering humanity; it was in
each case merely the poet's complacent analysis of his own exceptional
nature and personal grievances; it was the expression of the inevitable
surprise of youth, which notes for the first time reality's unsuspected
yet yawning indifference to the ideal, and the stubborn disaccord
between aspiration and fact. It was indeed very beautiful and elegiac,
and yet so fluent in its polished melancholy that somehow it did not at
all times seem to have been really felt. In any case, it was not a
theory of common woe, and lacked that clear conception of the
universality of suffering, which the less exalted minds of the
philosophers had already signaled, but for which no one as yet had been
able to suggest a remedy.

It was about this time that an action was being instituted against
humanity by a young Italian, the Count Giacomo Leopardi, and the
muffled discontent which for centuries had been throbbing through land
and literature was raised by his verse into one clear note of eloquent
arraignment.

Now, in most countries there is a provision which inhibits a judge from
hearing a cause which is pleaded by one of his connections, for it is
considered that the scales of justice are so delicately balanced, that
their holder should be preserved from any biasing influence, however
indirect; for much the same reason, there are few communities that
permit a man to sit in judgment on his own case. Some knowledge of
Leopardi himself, therefore, will be of service in deciding whether the
verdict which he brought against the world should be accepted without
appeal, or returned as vitiated by extraneous circumstances.

Leopardi passed a joyless boyhood at Recanti, one of those maddeningly
monotonous Italian towns whose unspeakable dreariness is only
attractive when viewed through the pages of Stendhal. The unrelaxing
severity of an austere and pedant father curbed, as with a bit, every
symptom of that haphazard gayety which is incident to youth. At once
precocious and restive, deformed yet inflammable, he was necessarily
enervated by the exasperating dullness of his life, and chafed, too, by
the rigid poverty to which his father condemned him. As he grew up,
his mind, richly stored with the wealth of antiquity, rioted in a
turbulency of imagination which, unable to find sympathetic welcome
without, consumed itself in morbid distrust within, and led him at last
from fervid Catholicism down the precipitate steps of negation.

He was not much over twenty before excessive study had well-nigh ruined
such health as he once possessed. The slightest application was
wearisome both to eye and brain. He wandered silently about the
neighboring forests, seeking solitude not only for the sake of
solitude, but also perhaps for the suggestions, at once soothing and
rebellious, which solitude always whispers to him who courts her truly.
At other times he sat hour by hour in a state as motionless as that of
catalepsy. "I am so much overcome," he wrote to a friend, "by the
nothingness that surrounds me, that I do not know how I have the
strength to answer your letter. If at this moment I lost my reason, I
think that my insanity would consist in sitting always with eyes fixed,
open-mouthed, without laughing or weeping, or changing place. I have no
longer the strength to form a desire, be it even for death."

The Muse, however, would have none of this; she flaunted her peplum so
seductively before him that, a little later, when he had been visited
by some semblance of returning health, he resisted no longer, and
delivered himself up to her, heart and soul.

The present century, especially during its earlier decades, has been
racked with a great glut of despondent verse; but no batch of poets,
however distressed, has been able, at any time, to catch and cling to
such a persistent monotone of complaint as that which runs through
every line of Leopardi's verse. To quote De Musset:--

     "Les plus désespérés sont les chants les plus beaux,
     Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots."

His odes, his adjurations to Italy, and his elegies are, one and all,
stamped with such unvarying and changeless despair, that their dominant
motive seems not unlike that tower which René, finding alone in the
desert, compared to a great thought in a mind ravaged by years and by
grief. His theory of life never altered; he resumed it in a distich,--

     ... "Arcano é tutto
     Fuor che il nostro dolor."

It may be said, and with justice perhaps, that it was the invalid body,
aggravating and coexisting with a mind naturally morbid, that
afterwards wrote of the _gentilezza del morir_, but it was the thinker,
conquering the ills of the flesh, who later whispered to the suffering
world the panacea of patience and resignation.

In Leopardi there is none of the vapid elegance and gaudy vocabulary of
French verse; technically, he wrote in what the Italians call _rime
sciolte_, and he charms the reader as well through a palpitant
sincerity as evident and continuous inspiration. Now, the educated
Italian turns naturally to rhyme; any incident holds to him the germ
of a sonnet, and there is perhaps no other country in the world so
richly dowered with patriotic canzoni as this joyously unhappy land.
But of all who have sounded this eloquent chord, not one has done so
with the masculine originality and fervor of expression that Leopardi
reached in his ode to Italy, in which, in a resounding call to arms, he
exclaims:--

     "Let my blood, O gods! be a flame to Italian hearts."

Italian hearts, however, had other matters to attend to, and Leopardi's
magnificent invocation was barely honored with a passing notice. For
that matter, his poetry, in spite of its resonant merit, has, through
some inexplicable cause, been generally ignored; and while it resembles
no other, it has never, so to speak, been in vogue.

As has been seen, he was a lover of solitude; indeed, it would not be
an exaggeration to say that he was glued to it; and in the isolation
which he partly made himself, and which was partly forced upon him, he
watched the incubation of thought very much as another might have noted
the progress of a disease. A life of this description, even at best, is
hardly calculated to awaken much enthusiasm for every-day matters, and
it was not long before Leopardi became not only heartily sick of the
commonplace aspects of life, but contemptuous, too, of those who lived
in broader and more active spheres.

Poetically untrammeled, and of advanced views on all subjects, he
regarded erudition as the simple novitiate of the man of letters, or in
other words, as a preparation which renders the intelligence supple and
pliant; and in one of those rare moments, when the timid approach of
ambition was seemingly unnoticed, he caressed the pleasing plan of
attacking Italian torpor with reason, passion with laughter, and of
becoming, in fact, the Plato, the Shakespeare, and the Lucian of his
epoch. To Giordani, his mentor, he wrote: "I study night and day, so
long as my health permits; when it prevents me from working, I wait a
month or so, and then begin again. As I am now totally different from
that which I was, my plan of study has altered with me. Everything
which savors of the pathetic or the eloquent wearies me beyond
expression. I seek now only the true, the real, which before was so
repulsive. I take pleasure in analyzing the misery of men and things,
and in shivering as I note the sinister and terrible mystery of life. I
see very clearly that when passion is once extinguished, there subsists
in study no other source of pleasure save that of vain curiosity, whose
satisfaction, however, is not without a certain charm."

But Leopardi was so essentially the poet that, in spite of his growing
disdain of the pathetic and the eloquent, he became not infrequently
the dupe of his own imagination. That which he took for the fruit of
deduction was probably little more than ordinary hypochondria, and in
turning as he did to other work, he was never able to free himself
entirely from the jealous influence of the muse.

He was, from a variety of causes, very miserable himself, and his
belief in universal misery amounted very nearly to a mania. His logic
reduced itself to the paraphrase of an axiom, "I am, therefore I
suffer," and the suffering which he experienced was not, he was very
sure, limited solely to himself. It was, he considered, the garment and
appanage of every sentient being. In this he was perfectly correct, but
his error consisted in holding all cases to be equally intense, and in
imagining that means might be devised which would at once do away with
or, at least, lessen the evil. Patience and resignation he had already
suggested, but naturally without appreciable success; indeed, the
regeneration of man, he clearly saw, was not to be brought about
through verse, and he turned therefore to philosophy with a fixity of
purpose, which was strengthened by the idea that he could work therein
another revolution. This was in 1825. Leopardi at that time was in his
twenty-seventh year, and the task to which he then devoted himself was,
he said, to be the sad ending of a miserable life. His intention was to
run the bitter truth to earth, to learn the obscure destinies of the
mortal and the eternal, to discover the wherefore of creation, and the
reason of man's burden of misery. "I wish," he said, "to dig to the
root of nature and seek the aim of the mysterious universe, whose
praises the sages sing, and before which I stand aghast."

Forthwith, then, in the "Operette Morale," Leopardi began a resolute,
if poetic, siege against every form of illusion. His philosophy,
however, provoked no revolution, nor can it be even said that he
discovered any truth more bitter than the old new ones, which antiquity
had unearthed before him. His work, nevertheless, sent the old facts
spinning into fresh and novel positions, and is to be particularly
admired for the artistic manner in which it handles the most stubborn
topics. The starting point of each of his arguments is that life is
evil; to any objection, and the objections that have been made are
countless, Leopardi has one invariable reply, "All that is advanced to
the contrary is the result of illusion." "But supposing life to be
painless," some one presumably may interject, whereupon Leopardi, with
the air of an oracle, too busy with weighty matters to descend to
chit-chat on the weather, will answer tersely, "Evil still."

It is useless for the practical man of the day, who knows the price of
wheat the whole world over before he has tasted his coffee, and who
digests a history of the world's doings and misdoings each morning with
his breakfast,--it is useless for him to say, as he invariably
does:--Why, this is rubbish, look at modern institutions, look at
progress, look at science; for if he listens to Leopardi he will learn
that all these palpable advantages have, in expanding activity, only
aggravated the misery of man. In other words, that the sorrows of men
and of nations develop in proportion to their intelligence, and the
most civilized are in consequence the most unhappy.

Indeed, Leopardi's philosophy is nothing if not destructive; he does
not aim so much to edify as to undermine. According to his theory the
universe is the resultant of an unconscious force, and this force, he
teaches, is shrouded in a vexatious mystery, behind which it is not
given to man to look. In one of his dialogues, certain mummies
resurrect for a quarter of an hour and tell in what manner they died.
"And what follows death?" their auditor asks, eagerly. But the quarter
of an hour has expired and the mummies relapse into silence.

In another fantastic scene, an Icelander, convinced that happiness is
unattainable, and solely occupied in avoiding pain, has, in shunning
society, found himself in the heart of the Sahara, face to face with
Nature. This Icelander, who, by the way, singularly resembles Leopardi,
had found but one protection against the ills of life, and that was
solitude; but wherever he wandered he had been pursued by a certain
malevolence. In spite of all he could do, he had roasted in summer and
shivered in winter. In vain he had sought a temperate climate: one land
was an ice-field, another an oven, and everywhere tempests or
earthquakes, vicious brutes or distracting insects. In short, unalloyed
misery. Finding himself, at last, face to face with Nature he took her
to task, demanding what right she had to create him without his
permission, and then, having done so, to leave him to his own devices?
Nature answers that she has but one duty, and that is to turn the wheel
of the universe, in which death supports life, and life death. "Well,
then," the obstinate Icelander asks, "tell me at least for whose
pleasure and for what purpose this miserable universe subsists?" But
before Nature can enlighten her embarrassing questioner, he is
surprised by two famished lions and conveniently devoured.

The moral of all this is not difficult to find. Life, such as it is, is
all this is accorded. Beyond it there is only an impenetrable silence.
The blue of the heavens is pervasive, but void. The hope of
ultramundane felicity is, therefore, an illusion, and man is to seek
such happiness as is possible only in this life. But if it be asked
what the possibilities of earthly happiness are, Leopardi is quick to
tell his reader that there are none at all.

As has been seen, he regarded life as an evil; and he insisted in so
regarding it, not only as a whole, but in each of its fractional
divisions. This idea is quaintly expressed in a dialogue between a
sorcerer and a demon, the latter having been presumably summoned with
an incantatory blue flame. The demon is somewhat sulky at first, and
asks why he has been disturbed. Is it wealth that the sorcerer wishes?
Is it glory or grandeur? But the sorcerer has neither greed nor
ambition.

"Do you wish me to procure for you a woman as captiously capricious as
Penelope?"

The sorcerer probably smiles, for he answers wittily:--

"Do you think I need the aid of a devil for that?"

Thus outfaced, the demon begs to know in what manner he may be of
service.

"I simply want one moment of happiness," the sorcerer answers.

But Mephisto declares, on his word as a gentleman, that such a thing is
impossible, because the desire for happiness is insatiable, and no one
can be happy so long as it is unsatisfied.

"Well, then?" the sorcerer asks, moodily querulous.

"Well, then," answers the demon, "if you think it worth while to give
me your soul before the time, behold me ready to oblige you."

Since happiness, then, is intangible, the wisest thing to do is to try
to be as little unhappy as possible. One of the chief opponents to such
a state of being is evidently discontent, and this, Leopardi hints,
should be routed at any cost, and the yawning spectre of ennui flung
with it into fettered exile. In the warmth of these instructions it is
curious to note how Leopardi turns on himself, so to speak, and
recommends as cure-all the very activity which he had before
proscribed. In his dialogue between Columbus and Gutierrez, the
navigator admits to his discouraged companion that the success of the
undertaking is far from certain; "but," he adds, "even if no other
benefit accrue from our voyage, it will be an advantage at least in
this; it has for a certain time delivered us from boredom; it has made
us love life, and appreciate, moreover, many things of which otherwise
we would have thought nothing."

It should not, however, be supposed that Leopardi had no higher rule of
life than that which is circumscribed in the narrow avoidance of
discontent. That man has certain duties to perform, he frequently
admitted, but he denied that he owed any to the unconscious and
tyrannical force which had given him life. "I will never kiss," he
said, "the hand that strikes." Any obligation to society was equally
out of the question. "Society," he noted in the _Pensieri_, "is a
league of blackguards against honest men." Man's duties are to himself
alone; and the essence of Leopardi's ethics (as, indeed, of all other
ethics) is held simply in the recommendation that virtue and
self-esteem be preserved. "To thine own self be true," Polonius had
said long before, and to this Leopardi had nothing to add.

The illusions which hamper life have been so clearly and thoroughly
analyzed by other thinkers, whose conclusions will be found to
constitute the groundwork of the subsequent part of this monograph,
that it will be unnecessary at this stage to examine any of Leopardi's
theories on this subject, save such, perhaps, as may seem to contain
original views. He had, as has been intimated, a thorough contempt for
life: "It is," he said, "fit but to be despised." _Nostra vita a che
val, sola a spregiarla._ He was, in consequence, well equipped to
combat the illusion which leads so many to imagine that were their
circumstances different, they would then be thoroughly content. This
idea is presented with vivacious ingenuity in a dialogue between a man
peddling calendars and a passer-by.

It runs somewhat as follows:--

    "Calendars! New calendars!"

    "For the coming year?"

    "Yes, sir."

    "Do you think the year will be a good one?"

    "Yes, indeed, sir."

    "As good as last year?"

    "Better, sir,--better."

    "As year before last?"

    "Much better, sir."

    "But wouldn't you care to have the next year like any of the
    past years?"

    "No, sir, I would not."

    "For how long have you been selling calendars?"

    "Nearly twenty years, sir."

    "Well, which of these twenty years would you wish to have
    like the coming one?"

    "I? I really don't know, sir."

    "Can't you remember any one year that seemed particularly
    attractive?"

    "I cannot, indeed, I cannot."

    "And yet life is very pleasant, isn't it?"

    "Oh, yes, sir, we all know that."

    "Would you not be glad to live these twenty years over
    again?"

    "God forbid, sir."

    "But supposing you had to live your life over again?"

    "I would not do it."

    "But what life would you care to live? mine, for instance, or
    that of a prince, or of some other person?"

    "Ah, sir, what a question!"

    "And yet, do you not see that I, or the prince, or any one
    else, would answer precisely as you do, and that no one would
    consent to live his life over again?"

    "Yes, sir, I suppose so."

    "Am I to understand, then, that you would not live your life
    over again?"

    "No, sir, truly, I would not."

    "What life would you care for, then?"

    "I would like, without any other condition, such a life as
    God might be pleased to give me."

    "In other words, one which would be happy-go-lucky, and of
    which you would know no more than you do of the coming year."

    "Exactly."

    "Well, then, that is what I would like too; it is what every
    one would like, and for the simple reason that up to this
    time there is no one whom chance has not badly treated. Every
    one agrees that the misery of life outbalances its pleasure,
    and I have yet to meet the man who would care to live his
    old life over. The life which is so pleasant is not the life
    with which we are personally acquainted; it is another life,
    not the life that we have lived, but the life which is to
    come. Next year will treat us all better; it will be the
    beginning of a happy existence. Do you not think it will?"

    "Indeed, I hope so, sir."

    "Show me your best calendar."

    "This one, sir; it is thirty soldi."

    "Here they are."

    "Thank you, sir, long life to you, sir. Calendars! new
    calendars!"

There are few scenes as clever as this, and fewer still in which irony
and humor are so delicately blended; and yet, notwithstanding its
studied bitterness, there is little doubt that its author clearly
perceived that life does hold one or two incontestable charms.

In speaking of glory, Pascal noted in his "Pensées" that even
philosophers seek it, and those who wrote it down wished the reputation
of having written it down well. To this rule Leopardi was no exception;
he admitted as much on several occasions; and even if he had not done
so, the fact would have been none the less evident from the burnish of
his verse and the purity of his prose, which was not that of a writer
to whom the opinion of others was indifferent. In the essay, therefore,
in which he attacks the illusion of literary renown, he reminds one
forcibly of Byron hurrying about in search of the visible isolation
which that simple-minded poet so seriously pursued; and yet while no
other writer, perhaps, has been more thoroughly given to _pose_ than
the author of "Childe Harold," there are few who have been so entirely
devoid of affectation as Leopardi. The comparative non-success of his
writings, however, was hardly calculated to make him view with any
great enthusiasm the subject of literary fame; and as, moreover, he
considered it his mission to besiege all illusions, he held up this one
in particular as a seductive chimera and attacked it accordingly.

In the "Ovvero della Gloria," he says reflectively: "Before an author
can reach the public with any chance of being judged without prejudice,
think of the amount of labor which he expends in learning how to write,
the difficulties which he has to overcome, and the envious voices which
he must silence. And even then, what does the public amount to? The
majority of readers yawn over a book, or admire it because some one
else has admired it before them. It is the style that makes a book
immortal; and as it requires a certain education to be a judge of
style, the number of connoisseurs is necessarily restricted. But beyond
mere form there must also be depth, and as each class of work
presupposes a special competence on the part of the critic, it is easy
to see how narrow the tribunal is which decides an author's reputation.
And even then, is it one which is thoroughly just? In the first place,
the critic, even when competent, judges--and in that he is but
human--according to the impression of the moment, and according to the
tastes which age or circumstances have created. If he is young, he
likes brilliance; old, he is unimpressionable. Great reputations are
made in great cities, and it is there that heart and mind are more or
less fatigued. A first impression, warped in this way, may often become
final; for if it be true that valuable works should be re-read, and are
only appreciated with time, it is also true that at the present time
very few books are read at all. Supposing, however, the most favorable
case: supposing that a writer, through the suffrage of a few of his
contemporaries, is certain of descending to posterity as a great
man,--what is a great man? Simply a name, which in a short time will
represent nothing. The opinion of the beautiful changes with the days,
and literary reputations are at the mercy of their variations; as to
scientific works, they are invariably surpassed or forgotten. Nowadays,
any second-rate mathematician knows more than Galileo or Newton."
Genius, then, is a sinister gift, and its attendant glory but a vain
and empty shadow.

The life of Leopardi, as told by his biographers, is poetically
suggestive of the story of the pale Armide, who burned the palace that
enchanted her; and the similarity becomes still more noticeable when he
is found hacking and hewing at the illusion of love. Personally
considered, Leopardi was not attractive; he was undersized, slightly
deformed, near-sighted, prematurely bald, nervous, and weak; and though
physical disadvantages are often disregarded by women, and not
infrequently inspire a compassion which, properly tended, may warm into
love, yet when the body, weak and infirm as was his, incases the
strength and lurid vitality of genius, the unlovable monstrosity is
complete. Indeed, in this respect, it may be noted that while the love
of a delicate-minded woman for a coarse and stupid ruffian is an
anomaly of daily repetition, there are yet few instances in which
genius, even when strong of limb, has succeeded in inspiring a great
and enduring affection.

Against Leopardi, then, the house of love was doubly barred. When he
was about nineteen, he watched the usual young girl who lives over the
way, and with a _naïveté_ which seems exquisitely pathetic he made no
sign, but simply watched and loved. The young lady does not appear to
have been in any way conscious of the mutely shy adoration which her
beauty had fanned into flame, and at any rate paid no attention to the
sickly dwarf across the street. She sat very placidly at her window, or
else fluttered about the room humming some old-fashioned air. This went
on for a year or more, until finally she was carried away in a rumbling
coach, to become the willing bride of another.

This, of course, was very terrible to Leopardi. Through some inductive
process, which ought to have been brought about by the electric
currents which he was establishing from behind the curtain, he had in
his lawless fancy made quite sure that his love would sooner or later
be felt and reciprocated. When, therefore, from his hiding place he saw
the bride depart in maiden ignorance of her conquest, and entirely
unconscious of the sonnets which had been written in her praise, the
poet's one sweet hope faded slowly with her.

This pure and sedate affection remained vibrant in his memory for many
years, and formed the theme of so many reveries and songs that love
finally appeared to him as but another form of suffering. In after
life, when much of the lustre of youthful candor had become dull and
tarnished, he besieged the heart of another lady, but this time in a
bolder and more enterprising fashion. His suit, however, was
unsuccessful. It may be that he was too eloquent; for eloquence is
rarely captivating save to the inexperienced, and the man who makes
love in rounded phrases seems to the practised eye to be more artistic
than sincere. At all events, his affection was not returned. The
phantom had passed very close, but all he had clutched was the air. He
was soon conscious, however, that he had made that mistake which is
common to all imaginative people: it was not the woman he loved, it was
beauty; not woman herself, but the ideal. It was a conception that he
had fallen in love with; a conception which the woman, like so many
others, had the power to inspire, and yet lacked the ability to
understand. This time Leopardi was done with love, and forthwith
attacked it as the last, yet most tenacious, of all illusions. "It is,"
he said, "an error like the others, but one which is more deeply
rooted, because, when all else is gone, men think they clutch therein
the last shadow of departing happiness. Error beato," he adds, and so
it may be, yet is he not well answered by that sage saying of Voltaire,
"L'erreur aussi a son mérite"?

It was in this way that Leopardi devastated the palace from whose
feasts he had been excluded. At every step he had taken he had left
some hope behind; he had been dying piecemeal all his life; he was
confessedly miserable, and this not alone on account of his poverty and
wretched health, but chiefly because of his lack of harmony with the
realities of existence. The world was to him the worst one possible,
and he would have been glad to adorn the gate of life with the
simplicity of Dante's insistent line,--

     "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate."

"There was a time," he said, "when I envied the ignorant and those who
thought well of themselves. To-day, I envy neither the ignorant nor the
wise, neither the great nor the weak; I envy the dead, and I would only
change with them."

This, of course, was purely personal. Toward the close of his life he
recognized that his judgment had been in a measure warped by the
peculiar misfortunes of his own position, but in so doing he seemed
almost to be depriving himself of a last, if sad, consolation. Nor did
he ever wholly recant, and it is in the conception of the universality
of misery which stamped all his writings, and which, even had he
wished, he was then powerless to alter, that his relation to the
theoretic pessimism of to-day chiefly rests.

As a creed, the birthplace of pessimism is to be sought on the banks of
the Ganges, or far back in the flower-lands of Nepaul, where the
initiate, with every desire lulled, awaits Nirvâna, and murmurs only,
"Life is evil."

Now, as is well known, in every religion there is a certain
metaphysical basis which is designed to supply an answer to man's first
question; for while the animal lives in undismayed repose, man of all
created things alone marvels at his own existence and at the
destruction of his fellows. To his first question, then, What is life
and death? each system attempts to offer a perfect reply; indeed, the
temples, cathedrals, and pagodas clearly attest that man at all times
and in all lands has continually demanded that some reply should be
given, and it is perhaps for this very reason that where other beliefs
have found fervent adherents, neither materialism nor skepticism have
been ever able to acquire a durable influence. It is, however, curious
to note that in attempting the answer, nearly every creed has given an
unfavorable interpretation to life. Aside from the glorious lessons of
Christianity, its teaching, in brief, is that the world is a vale of
tears, that nothing here can yield any real satisfaction, and that
happiness, which is not for mortals, is solely the recompense of the
ransomed soul. To the Brahmin, while there is always the hope of
absorption in the Universal Spirit, life meanwhile is a regrettable
accident. But in Buddhism, which is perhaps the most naïve and yet the
most sublime of all religions, and which through its very combination
of simplicity and grandeur appeals to a larger number of adherents than
any other, pessimism is the beginning, as it is the end.

To the Buddhist there is reality neither in the future nor in the past.
To him true knowledge consists in the perception of the nothingness of
all things, in the consciousness of--

     "The vastness of the agony of earth,
     The vainness of its joys, the mockery
     Of all its best, the anguish of its worst;"

and in the desire to escape from the evil of existence into the entire
affranchisement of the intelligence. To the Buddhist,--

                                ... "Sorrow is
     Shadow to life, moving where life doth move."

The Buddhist believes that the soul migrates until Nirvâna is attained,
and that in the preparation for this state, which is the death of
Death, the nothingness of a flame extinguished, there are four degrees.
In the first, the novitiate learns to be implacable to himself, yet
charitable and compassionate to others. He then acquires an
understanding into the nature of all things, until he has suppressed
every desire save that of attaining Nirvâna, when he passes initiate
into the second degree, in which judgment ceases. In the next stage,
the vague sentiment of satisfaction, which had been derived from
intellectual perfection, is lost, and in the last, the confused
consciousness of identity disappears. It is at this point that Nirvâna
begins, but only begins and stretches to vertiginous heights through
four higher degrees of ecstasy, of which the first is the region of
infinity in space, the next, the realm of infinity in intelligence,
then the sphere in which nothing is, and, finally, the loss of even the
perception of nothing. When Death is dead, when all have attained
Nirvâna, then, according to the Buddhist, the universe will rock
forevermore in unconscious rest.

In brief, then, life to the Christian is a probation, to the Brahmin a
burden, to the Buddhist a dream, and to the pessimist a nightmare.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Zeller, _Philosophie der Griechen_.]

[Footnote 2: _Werke_, _v._ p. 408, _et seq._]




CHAPTER II.

THE HIGH PRIEST OF PESSIMISM.


Arthur Schopenhauer, the founder of the present school, was born toward
the close of the last century, in the now mildewed city of Dantzic. His
people came of good Dutch stock, and were both well-to-do and peculiar.
His grandmother lost her reason at the death of her husband, a
circumstance as unusual then as in more recent years; his two uncles
passed their melancholy lives on the frontiers of insanity, and his
father enjoyed a reputation for eccentricity which his end fully
justified.

This latter gentleman was a rich and energetic merchant, of educated
tastes and excitable disposition, who, when well advanced in middle
life, married the young and gifted daughter of one of the chief
magnates of the town. Their union was not more unhappy than is usually
the case under similar circumstances, his time being generally passed
with his ledger, and hers with the poets.

With increasing years, however, his untamable petulance grew to such an
extent that he was not at all times considered perfectly sane, and it
is related that on being visited one day by a lifelong acquaintance,
who announced himself as an old friend, he exclaimed, with abrupt
indignation, "Friend, indeed! there is no such thing; besides, people
come here every day and say they are this, that, and the other. I don't
know them, and I don't want to." A day or two later, he met the same
individual, greeted him with cheerful cordiality, and led him amiably
home to dinner. Shortly after, he threw himself from his warehouse to
the canal below.

He had always intended that his son, who was then in his sixteenth
year, should continue the business; and to prepare him properly for his
duties he had christened him Arthur, because he found that name was
pretty much the same in all European languages, and furthermore had
sent the lad at an early age first to France, and then to England, that
he might gain some acquaintance and familiarity with other tongues.

The boy liked his name, and took naturally to languages, but he felt no
desire to utilize these possessions in the depressing atmosphere of
commercial life, and after his father's death loitered first at the
benches of Gotha and then at those of Göttingen.

Meanwhile his mother established herself at Weimar, where she soon
attracted to her all that was brilliant in that brilliant city. Goethe,
Wieland, Fernow, Falk, Grimm, and the two Schlegels were her constant
guests. At court she was received as a welcome addition, and such an
effect had these surroundings upon her imagination, that in not very
many years she managed to produce twenty-four compact volumes of
criticism and romance.

During this time her son was not idle. Thoroughly familiar with ancient
as with modern literature, he devoted his first year at Göttingen to
medicine, mathematics and history; while in his second, which he passed
in company with Bunsen and William B. Astor, he studied physics,
physiology, psychology, ethnology and logic; as these diversions did
not quite fill the hour, he aided the flight of idle moments with a
guitar.

He was at this time a singularly good-looking young man, possessing a
grave and expressive type of beauty, which in after years developed
into that suggestion of majestic calm for which the head of Beethoven
is celebrated, while to his lips there then came a smile as
relentlessly implacable as that of Voltaire.

From boyhood he had been of a thoughtful disposition, finding wisdom in
the falling leaf, problems in vibrating light, and movement in
immobility. Already he had wrung his hands at the stars, and watched
the distant future rise with its flouting jeer at the ills of man. In
this, however, there was little of the cheap sentimentalism of Byron,
and less of the weariness of Lamartine. His griefs were purely
objective; life to him was a perplexing riddle, whose true meaning was
well worth a search; and as the only possible solution of the gigantic
enigma seemed to lie in some unexplored depth of metaphysics, he soon
after betook himself to Berlin, where Fichte then reigned as Kant's
legitimate successor. But the long-winded demonstrations that Fichte
affected, his tiresome verbiage, lit, if at all, only by some trivial
truism or trumpery paradox, bored Schopenhauer at first well-nigh to
death, and then worked on his nerves to such an extent that he longed,
pistol in hand, to catch at his throat, and cry, "Die like a dog you
shall; but for your pitiful soul's sake, tell me if in all this rubbish
you really mean anything, or take me simply for an imbecile like
yourself." For Schopenhauer, it should be understood, had passed his
nights first with Plato and then with Kant; they were to him like two
giants calling to one another across the centuries, and that this
huckster of phrases should pretend to cloak his nakedness with their
mantle seemed to him at once indecent and absurd.

Schelling pleased him no better; he dismissed him with a
word,--mountebank; but for Hegel, Caliban-Hegel as he was wont in after
years to call him, his contempt was so violent that, with a prudence
which is both amusing and characteristic, he took counsel from an
attorney as to the exact limit he might touch in abusing him without
becoming amenable to a suit for defamation. "Hegel's philosophy," he
said, "is a crystalized syllogism; it is an abracadabra, a puff of
bombast, and a wish-wash of phrases, which in its monstrous
construction compels the mind to form impossible contradictions, and
in itself is enough to cause an entire atrophy of the intellect." "It
is made up of three fourths nonsense and one fourth error; it contains
words, not thoughts;" and then, rising in his indignation to the
heights of quotation, he added, "'Such stuff as madmen tongue and brain
not.'" Time, it may be noted, has to a great extent indorsed
Schopenhauer's verdict. The tortures of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel
linger now in the history of philosophy very much as might the memory
of a nightmare, and except in a few cobwebbed halls the teachings of
the three sophists may safely be considered as a part of the
inexplicable past.

It should not, however, be supposed that because he found the
philosophy of the moment so little to his taste he necessarily
squandered his time; on the contrary, he turned to Aristotle and
Spinoza for consolation, and therewith followed sundry lectures in
magnetism, electricity, ichthyology, amphiology, ornithology, zoölogy,
and astronomy, all of which he enlivened with rapid incursions to the
rich granaries of Rabelais and Montaigne, and moreover gave no little
time to the study of the religion and philosophy of India.

It was at this time characteristic of the man, that while his
appearance, wealth, and connections would have formed an open letter to
the best society in Berlin, which was then heterogeneously agreeable,
or even to the worst, which is said to have been charming, he preferred
to pass his leisure hours in scrutinizing the animals in the
Zoölogical Gardens, and in studying the inmates of the State Lunatic
Asylum.

In this _cità dolente_ his attention was particularly claimed by two
unfortunates who, while perfectly conscious of their infirmity, were
yet unable to master it; in proof of which, one wrote him a series of
sonnets, and the other sent him annotated passages from the Bible.

In the second year of his student life at Berlin the war of 1813 was
declared, and Schopenhauer was in consequence obliged to leave the city
before he had obtained his degree. He prepared, however, and forwarded
to the faculty at Jena an elaborate thesis, which he entitled the
Quadruple Root of Conclusive Reason,--a name which somewhat astounded
his mother, who asked him if it were something for the apothecary,--and
meanwhile prowled about Weimar meditating on the philosophy which he
had long intended to produce. He visited no one but Goethe, took
umbrage at his mother's probably harmless relations with Fernow,
treated her to discourse not dissimilar to that which Hamlet had
addressed to his own parent, received his degree from Jena, and then
went off to Dresden, where he began to study women with that
microscopic eye which he turned on all subjects that engaged his
attention.

The result of these studies was an essay on the metaphysics of love,
which he thereupon attached to his budding system of philosophy; an
axiom to the effect that women are rich in hair and poor in thought;
and the same misadventure that befell Descartes.

His life at Dresden was necessarily much less secluded than that to
which he had been hitherto accustomed; he became an _habitué_ at the
opera and comedy, a frequent guest in literary and social circles, and,
as student of men and things, he went about disturbing draperies and
disarranging screens, very much as any other philosopher might do who
was bent on seeing the world.

Meanwhile, he was not otherwise idle: the morning he gave to work, and
in the afternoon he surrendered himself to Nature, whom he loved with a
passionate devotion, which increased with his years. The companionship
of men was always more or less irksome to him; and while it was less so
perhaps at this time than at any other, it was nevertheless with a
sense of relief that he struck out across the inviting pasture-lands of
Saxony, or down the banks of the Elbe, and left humanity behind, in
search of that open-air solitude which is Nature's nearest friend.

In the companionship of others he was constantly seeking a trait or a
suggestion, some hint capable of development; when in the world,
therefore, he flashed a lantern, so to speak, at people, and then
passed them by; but in the open country he communed with himself, and
strolled along, note-book in hand, jotting down the thoughts worth
jotting very much after the manner that Emerson is said to have
recommended.

With regard to the majority of men, it will not seem reckless to say
that their end and aim is happiness and self-satisfaction; but however
trite the remark may be, it may still perhaps serve to bring into
relief something of Schopenhauer's distinctive purpose. It would, of
course, be foolish to assert that he did not care for his own
happiness, and disregarded his own satisfaction, for of these things
few men, it is imagined, have thought more highly. If his ideas of
happiness diverged widely from those generally received as standards,
it has but little to do with the matter in hand, for the point which is
intended to be conveyed is simply that above all other things, beyond
the culture of self, that which Schopenhauer cared for most was truth,
and that he pursued it, moreover, as pertinaciously as any other
thinker whom the world now honors. Whether he ran it to earth or not,
the reader must himself decide; indeed, it was very many years before
any one even heard that he had been chasing it at all. Of late,
however, some of the best pickets who guard the literary outposts from
Boston to Bombay have brought a very positive assurance that he did
catch it, and, moreover, held it fast long enough to wring out some
singularly valuable intimations.

In hurrying along after his quarry, Schopenhauer became convinced that
life was a lesson which most men learned trippingly enough, but whose
moral they failed to detect; and this moral, which he felt he had
caught on the wing, as it were, he set about dissecting with a great
and sumptuous variety of reflection.

Wandering, then, on the banks of the Elbe, massing his thoughts and
arranging their progression, his system slowly yet gradually expanded
before him. He wrote only in moments of inspiration, yet his hours were
full of such moments; little by little he drifted away from the opera
and his friends into a solitude which he made populous with thought,
and in this manner gave himself up so entirely to his philosophy that
one day, it is reported, he astonished an innocent-minded gate-keeper,
who asked him who he was, with the weird and pensive answer, "Ah! if I
but knew, myself!"

Meanwhile his work grew rapidly beneath his hands, and when after four
years of labor and research "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung" was so
far completed as to permit its publication, he read it over with
something of the same unfamiliarity which he would have experienced in
reading the work of another author, though, doubtless, with greater
satisfaction.

Fascinated with its merits, he offered the manuscript to Brockhaus, the
Leipsic publisher. "My book," he wrote, "is a new system of philosophy,
but when I say new I mean new in every sense of the word; it is not a
restatement of what has been already expressed, but it is in the
highest degree a continuous flow of thought such as has never before
entered the mind of mortal man. It is a book which, in my opinion, is
destined to rank with those which form the source and incentive to
hundreds of others."

Brockhaus, familiar with the proverbial modesty of young authors, lent
but an inattentive ear to these alluring statements, and accepted the
book solely on account of the reputation which Schopenhauer's mother
then enjoyed; a mark of confidence, by the way, which he soon deeply
regretted. "It is so much waste paper," he said, dismally, in after
years; "I wish I had never heard of it." He lived long enough, however,
to change his mind, and in 1880 his successors published a stout little
pamphlet containing the titles of over five hundred books and articles,
of which the "World as Will and Idea" formed the source and incentive.
"Le monde," Montaigne has quaintly noted, "regorge de commentaires,
mais d'auteurs il en est grand chierté."

Schopenhauer's philosophy first appeared in 1818; but while it was
still in press, its author, like one who has sprung a mine and fears
the report, fled away to Italy, where he wandered about from Venice to
Naples bathing his senses in color and music. He associated at this
time very willingly with Englishmen, and especially with English
artists and men of letters. Germans and Americans he avoided, and as
for Jews, he not only detested them, but expressed an admiring approval
of Nebuchadnezzar, and only regretted that he had been so lenient with
them. "The Jews are God's chosen people, are they?" he would say,
"very good; tastes differ, they certainly are not mine." In this
dislike he made no exception, and scenting in after years some of the
_foetor judaicus_ on Heine and Meyerbeer, he refused them the
attention which others were only too glad to accord. Schopenhauer's
distaste, however, for everything that savored of the Israelite will be
perhaps more readily understood when it is remembered that the Jews, as
a race, are optimists, and their creed, therefore, to him, in his
consistency, was like the aggressive flag to the typical bull.

With the Germans he had another grievance. "The Germans," he said, "are
heavy by nature; it is a national characteristic, and one which is
noticeable not only in the way they carry themselves, but in their
language, their fiction, their conversation, their writings, their way
of thinking, and especially in their style and in their mania for
constructing long and involved sentences. In reading German," he
continued, "memory is obliged to retain mechanically, as in a lesson,
the words that are forced upon it, until after patient labor a period
is reached, the keynote is found, and the meaning disentangled. When
the Germans," he added, "get hold of a vague and unsuitable expression
which will completely obscure their meaning, they pat themselves on the
back; for their great aim is to leave an opening in every phrase,
through which they may seem to come back and say more than they
thought. In this trick they excel, and if they can manage to be
emphatic and affected at the same time, they are simply afloat in a sea
of joy. Foreigners hate all this, and revenge themselves in reading
German as little as possible.... Wherefore, in provision of my death, I
acknowledge that on account of its infinite stupidity I loathe the
German nation, and that I blush to belong thereto."

At various _tables-d'hôte_ Schopenhauer had encountered traveling
Yankees, and objected to them accordingly. "They are," he said, "the
_plebs_ of the world, partly, I suppose, on account of their republican
government, and partly because they descend from those who left Europe
for Europe's good. The climate, too," he added, reflectively, "may have
something to do with it." Nor did Frenchmen escape his satire. "Other
parts of the world have monkeys; Europe has Frenchmen, _ça balance_."

But with Englishmen he got on very well, and during his after life
always talked to himself in their tongue, wrote his memoranda in
English, and read the "Times" daily, advertisements and all.

Meanwhile Schopenhauer held his hand to his ear unavailingly. From
across the Alps there came to him no echo of any report, only a silence
which was ominous enough to have assured any other that the fusee had
not been properly applied. But to him it was different; he had, it is
true, expected a reverberation which would shake the sophistry of all
civilization, and when no tremor came he was mystified, but only for
the moment. He had been too much accustomed to seek his own dead in the
great morgue of literature not to know that any man, who is to belong
to posterity, is necessarily a stranger to his epoch. And that he was
to belong to posterity he had no possible doubt; indeed he had that
prescience of genius which foresees its own future, and he felt that
however tightly the bushel might be closed over the light, there were
still crevices through which it yet would shine, and from which at last
some conflagration must necessarily burst.

It was part of the man to analyze all things, and while it cannot be
said that the lack of attention with which his philosophy had been
received left him entirely unmoved, it would be incorrect to suppose
that he was then sitting on the pins and needles of impatience.

Deeply reflective, he was naturally aware that as everything which is
exquisite ripens slowly, so is the growth of fame proportioned to its
durability. And Schopenhauer meant to be famous, and this not so much
for fame's sake, as for the good which his fame would spread with it.
He could therefore well afford to wait. His work was not written
especially to his own epoch, save only in so far as his epoch was part
of humanity collectively considered. It did not, therefore, take him
long to understand that as his work was not tinted with any of the
local color and fugitive caprices of the moment, it was in consequence
unadapted to an immediate and fictitious vogue. Indeed, it may be added
that the history of art and literature is eloquent with the examples of
the masterpieces which, unrewarded by contemporary appreciation, have
passed into the welcome of another age; and of these examples few are
more striking than that of the absolute indifference with which
Schopenhauer's philosophy was first received.

It was presumably with reflections of this nature that Schopenhauer
shrugged his shoulders at the inattention under which he labored, and
wandered serenely among the treasuries and ghosts of departed Rome.

About this time an incident happened which, while not possessing any
very vivid interest, so affected his after life as to be at least
deserving of passing notice. Schopenhauer was then in his thirty-first
year. On coming of age, he had received his share of his father's
property, some of which he securely invested, but the greater part he
deposited at high interest with a well-known business house in Dantzic.
When leaving for Italy, he took from this firm notes payable on demand
for the amount which they held to his credit, and after he had cashed
one of their bills, learned that the firm was in difficulties. Shortly
after, they suspended payment, offering thirty per cent. to those of
their creditors who were willing to accept such an arrangement, and
nothing to those who refused.

All the creditors accepted save Schopenhauer, who, with the wile of a
diplomat, wrote that he was in no hurry for his money, but that perhaps
if he were made preferred creditor he might accept a better offer. His
debtors fell into the trap, and offered him first fifty, and then
seventy per cent. These offers he also refused. "If," he wrote, "you
offer me thirty per cent. when you are able to pay fifty, and fifty per
cent. when you are able to pay seventy, I have good reason to suspect
that you can pay the whole amount. In any event, my right is perennial.
I need not present my notes until I care to. Settle with your other
creditors, and then you will be in a better position to attend to me. A
wise man watches the burning phoenix with a certain pleasure, for he
well knows what that crafty bird does with its ashes. Keep my money,
and I will keep your drafts. When your affairs are straightened either
we will exchange, or you will be arrested for debt. I am, of course,
very sorry not to be able to oblige you, and I dare say you think me
very disagreeable, but that is only an illusion of yours, which is at
once dispelled when you remember that the money is my own, and that its
possession concerns my lifelong freedom and well-being. You will say,
perhaps, that if all your creditors thought as I do, it would be deuced
hard for me. But if all men thought as I do, not only would more be
thought, but there would probably be neither bankrupts nor swindlers.
Machiavelli says, Giacchè il volgo pensa altrimente,--although the
common herd think otherwise,--ma nel mondo non é se non volgo,--and
the world is made up of the common herd,--e gli pocchi ivi luogo
trovano,--yet the exceptions take their position,--dove gli molti stare
non possono,--where the crowd can find no foot-hold."

By the exercise of a little patience, and after a few more dagger
thrusts of this description, Schopenhauer recovered the entire amount
which was due him, together with the interest in full. But the danger
which he had so cleverly avoided gave him, so to speak, a retrospective
shock; the possibility of want had brushed too near for comfort's sake.
He was thoroughly frightened; and in shuddering at the cause of his
fright he experienced such a feeling of insecurity with regard to what
the future might yet hold that he determined to lose no time in seeking
a remunerative shelter. With this object he returned to Berlin, and as
_privat-docent_ began to lecture on the history of philosophy.

Hegel was then in the high tide of his glory. Scholars from far and
near came to listen to the man who had compared himself to Christ, and
said, "I am Truth, and teach truth." In the "Reisebilder," Heine says
that in the learned caravansary of Berlin the camels collected about
the fountain of Hegelian wisdom, kneeled down, received their burden of
precious waters, and then set out across the desert wastes of
Brandenburg.

At that time not to bend before Hegel was the blackest and most wanton
of sins. To disagree with him was heretical, and as few understood his
meaning clearly enough to attempt to controvert it, it will be readily
understood that in those days there was very little heresy in Berlin.

Among the few, however, Schopenhauer headed the list. "I write to be
understood," he said; and indeed no one who came in contact with him or
with his works had ever the least difficulty in seizing his meaning and
understanding his immense disgust for the "pachyderm hydrocephali,
pedantic eunuchs, apocaliptic retinue della bestia triumphante," as in
after years, with gorgeous emphasis, he was wont to designate Hegel and
his clique. The war that he waged against them was truly Homeric. He
denounced Hegel in a manner that would have made Swinburne blush; then
he attacked the professors of philosophy in general and the Hegelians
in particular, and finally the demagogues who believed in them, and who
had baptized themselves "Young Germany."

For the preparation of such writings as theirs he had a receipt, which
was homeopathic in its simplicity. "Dilute a minimum of thought in five
hundred pages of nauseous phraseology, and for the rest trust to the
German patience of the reader." He also suggested that for the wonder
and astonishment of posterity every public library should carefully
preserve in half calf the complete works of the great philosophaster
and his adorers; and, considering very correctly that philosophers
cannot be hatched like bachelors of arts, he further recommended that
the course in philosophy should be cut from the University programmes,
and the teaching in that branch be limited to logic. "You can't write
an Iliad," he said, "when your mother is a dolt, and your father is a
cotton nightcap."

There are few debts which are so faithfully acquitted as those of
contempt; and as Schopenhauer kicked down every screen, tore off every
mask, and jeered at every sham, it would be a great stretch of fancy to
imagine that he was a popular teacher. But this at least may be said:
he was courageous, and he was strong of purpose. In the end, he dragged
Germany from her lethargy, and rather than take any other part in
Hegelism than that of spectre at the feast, he condemned himself to an
almost lifelong obscurity. If, therefore, he seems at times too bitter
and too relentless, it should be remembered that this man, whom Germany
now honors as one of her greatest philosophers, fought single-handed
for thirty years, and routed the enemy at last by the mere force and
lash of his words.

But in the mean time, while Hegel was holding forth to crowded halls,
his rival, who, out of sheer bravado, had chosen the same hours,
lectured to an audience of about half a dozen persons, among whom a
dentist, a horse-jockey, and a captain on half pay were the more
noteworthy. Such listeners were hardly calculated to make him
frantically attached to the calling he had chosen, and accordingly at
the end of the first semester he left the empty benches to take care of
themselves.

Early in life Schopenhauer wrote in English, in his note-book,
"Matrimony--war and want!" and when the _privat-docent_ had been
decently buried, and the crape grown rusty, he began to consider this
little sentence with much attention. As will be seen later on, he
objected to women as a class on purely logical grounds,--they
interfered with his plan of delivering the world from suffering; but
against the individual he had no marked dislike, only a few pleasing
epigrams. During his Dresden sojourn, as in his journey to Italy, he
had knelt, in his quality of philosopher who was seeing the world, at
many and diverse shrines, and had in no sense wandered from them
sorrow-laureled; but all that had been very different from assuming
legal responsibilities, and whenever he thought with favor of the
_petits soins_ of which, as married man, he would be the object, the
phantom of a milliner's bill loomed in double columns before him.

Should he or should he not, he queried, fall into the trap which nature
has set for all men? The question of love did not enter into the matter
at all. He believed in love as most well-read people believe in William
Tell; that is, as something very inspiring, especially when treated by
Rossini, but otherwise as a myth. Nor did he need Montaigne's hint to
be assured that men marry for others and not for themselves. The
subject, therefore, was somewhat complex: on the one side stood the
attention and admiration which he craved, and on the other an eternal
farewell to that untrammeled freedom which is the thinker's natural
heath.

The die, however, had to be cast then or never. He was getting on in
life, and an opportunity had at that time presented itself, a
repetition of which seemed unlikely. After much reflection, and much
weighing of the pros and cons, he concluded that it is the married man
who supports the full burden of life, while the bachelor bears but
half, and it is to the latter class, he argued, that the courtesan of
the muses should belong. Thereupon, with a luxury of reminiscence and
quotation which was usual to him at all times, he strengthened his
resolution with mental foot-notes, to the effect that Descartes,
Leibnitz, Malebranche, and Kant were bachelors, the great poets
uniformly married and uniformly unhappy; and supported it all with
Bacon's statement that "he that hath wife and children has given
hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises,
either of virtue or of mischief."

In 1831 the cholera appeared in Berlin, and Schopenhauer, who called
himself a choleraphobe by profession, fled before it in search of a
milder and healthier climate. Frankfort he chose for his hermitage, and
from that time up to the day of his death, which occurred in September,
1860, he continued to live there in great peace and tranquillity.

Schopenhauer should in no wise be represented as having passed his life
in building dungeons in Spain. Like every true scholar he was, in the
absence of his peers, able to live with great comfort with the dead. He
was something of a Mezzofanti; he spoke and read half a dozen languages
with perfect ease, and he could in consequence enter any library with
the certainty of finding friends and relations therein. For the
companionship of others he did not care a rap. He was never so lonely
as when associating with other people, and of all things that he
disliked the most, and a catalogue of his dislikes would fill a
chapter, the so-called entertainment headed the obnoxious list.

He had taken off, one by one, the different layers of the social nut,
and in nibbling at the kernel he found its insipidity so great that he
had small approval for those who made it part of their ordinary diet.
It should not, however, be supposed that this dislike for society and
the companionship of others sprang from any of that necessity for
solitude which is noticeable in certain cases of hypochondria; it was
simply due to the fact that he could not, in the general run of men,
find any one with whom he could associate on a footing of equality. If
Voltaire, Helvetius, Kant, or Cabanais, or, for that matter, any one
possessed of original thoughts, had dwelled in the neighborhood,
Schopenhauer, once in a while, would have delighted in supping with
them; but as agreeable symposiasts were infrequent, he was of necessity
thrown entirely on his own resources. His history, in brief, is that of
the malediction under which king and genius labor equally. Both are
condemned to solitude; and for solitude such as theirs there is neither
chart nor compass. Of course there are many other men who in modern
times have also led lives of great seclusion, but in this respect it
may confidently be stated that no thinker of recent years, Thoreau not
excepted, has ever lived in isolation more thorough and complete than
that which was enjoyed by this blithe misanthrope.

It is not as though he had betaken himself to an unfrequented waste, or
to the top of an inaccessible crag; such behavior would have savored of
an affectation of which he was incapable, and, moreover, would have
told its story of an inability to otherwise resist the charms of
society. Besides, Schopenhauer was no anchorite; he lived very
comfortably in the heart of a populous and pleasant city, and dined
daily at the best _table d'hôte_, but he lived and dined utterly alone.

He considered that, as a rule, a man is never in perfect harmony save
with himself, for, he argued, however tenderly a friend or mistress may
be beloved, there is at times some clash and discord. Perfect
tranquillity, he said, is found only in solitude, and to be permanent
only in absolute seclusion; and he insisted that the hermit, if
intellectually rich, enjoys the happiest condition which this life can
offer. The love of solitude, however, can hardly be said to exist in
any one as a natural instinct; on the contrary, it may be regarded as
an acquired taste, and one which must be developed in indirect
progression. Schopenhauer, who cultivated it to its most supreme
expression, admitted that at first he had many fierce struggles with
the natural instinct of sociability, and at times had strenuously
combated some such Mephistophelian suggestion as,--

     "Hör' auf, mit deinem Gram zu spielen,
     Der, wie ein Geier, dir am Leben frisst:
     Die schlechteste Gesellschaft lässt dich fühlen
     Dass du ein Mensch, mit Menschen bist."

But solitude, more or less rigid, is undoubtedly the lot of all
superior minds. They may grieve over it, as Schopenhauer says, but of
two evils they will choose it as the least. After that, it is
presumably but a question of getting acclimated. In old age the
inclination comes, he notes, almost of itself. At sixty it is well-nigh
instinctive; at that age everything is in its favor. The incentives
which are the most energetic in behalf of sociability then no longer
act. With advancing years there arises a capacity of sufficing to one's
self, which little by little absorbs the social instinct. Illusions
then have faded, and, ordinarily speaking, active life has ceased.
There is nothing more to be expected, there are no plans nor projects
to form, the generation to which old age really belongs has passed
away, and, surrounded by a new race, one is then objectively and
essentially alone.

Then, too, many things are clearly seen, which before were as veiled by
a mist. As the result of long experience very little is expected from
the majority of people, and the conclusion is generally reached that
not only men do not improve on acquaintance, but that mankind is made
up of very defective copies, with which it is best to have as little to
do as possible.

But beyond converting his life into a monodrama with reflections of
this description, Schopenhauer considered himself to be a missionary of
truth, and in consequence as little fitted for every-day companionship
as missionaries in China feel themselves called upon to fraternize with
the Chinese. It was the rule of his life to expect nothing, desire as
little as possible, and learn all he could, and as little was to be
expected and nothing was to be learned from the majority of the dull
ruffians who go to the making of the census, it is not to be wondered
that he trod the thoroughfares of thought alone and dismissed the
majority of men with a shrug.

"They are," he said, "just what they seem to be, and that is the worst
that can be said of them." Epigrams of this description were naturally
not apt to increase his popularity. But for that he cared very little.
He considered that no man can judge another save by the measure of his
own understanding. Of course, if this understanding is of a low degree,
the greatest intellectual gifts which another may possess convey to him
no meaning; they are as colors to the blind; and consequently, in a
great nature there will be noticed only those defects and weaknesses
which are inseparable from every character.

But to such a man as Schopenhauer,--one who considered five sixths of
the population to be knaves or blockheads, and who had thought out a
system for the remaining fraction,--to such a man as he, the question
of esteem, or the lack thereof, was of small consequence. He cared
nothing for the existence which he led in the minds of other people. To
his own self he was true, to the calling of his destiny constant, and
he felt that he could sit and snap his fingers at the world, knowing
that Time, who is at least a gentleman, would bring him his due
unasked.

Schopenhauer's character was made up of that combination of seeming
contradictions which is the peculiarity of all great men. He had the
audacity of childhood and the timidity of genius. He was suspicious of
every one, and ineffably kind-hearted. With stupidity in any form he
was blunt, even to violence, and yet his manner and courtesy were such
as is attributed to the gentlemen of the old school. If he was an
egotist, he was also charitable to excess; and who shall say that
charity is not the egotism of great natures? He was honesty itself, and
yet thought every one wished to cheat him. To mislead a possible thief
he labeled his valuables Arcana Medica, put his banknotes in
dictionaries, and his gold pieces in ink bottles. He slept on the
ground floor, that he might escape easily in case of fire. If he heard
a noise at night he snatched at a pistol, which he kept loaded at his
bedside. Indeed, he might have chosen for his motto, "Je ne crains rien
fors le dangier," and yet who is ever so foolish as a wise man? Kant's
biography is full of similar vagaries, and one has but to turn to the
history of any of the thinkers whose names are landmarks in literature,
to find that eccentricities no less striking have also been recorded of
them.

Voltaire said, "On aime la vie, mais le néant ne laisse pas d'avoir du
bon;" and Schopenhauer, not to be outdone, added more massively, that
if one could tap on the tombs and ask the dead if they cared to return,
they would shake their heads. His views of life, however, and of the
world in general, will be considered later on, and for the moment it is
but necessary to note that he regarded happiness as consisting solely
in the absence of pain, and laid down as one of the supreme rules for
the proper conduct of life that discontent should be banished as far as
possible into the outer darkness.

When, therefore, to this Emerson in black there came those moments of
restlessness and dissatisfaction which visit even the most philosophic,
he would argue with himself in a way which was almost pathetic, and
certainly naïve; it was not he that was moody and out of sorts, it was
some _privat-docent_ lecturing to empty halls, some one who was abused
by the Philistines, some defendant in a suit for damages, some one
whose fortune was engulfed perhaps beyond recovery, some lover
pleading to inattentive ears, some one attacked by one of the thousand
ills that flesh is heir to; yet this was not he; these things truly he
might have endured and suffered as one bears for a moment an ill-made
shoe, but now the foot no longer ached; indeed, he was none of all
this, he was the author of the "Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," and
what had the days to do with him!

But through all the intervening years the book had lain unnoticed on
the back shelves of the Leipsic publisher; and Schopenhauer, who had at
first been puzzled, but never disheartened, at the silence which had
settled about it, became convinced that through the influence of the
three sophists at Berlin, all mention of its merit had been suppressed
from the start.

"I am," he said, "the Iron Mask, the Caspar Hauser of philosophy," and
thereupon he pictured the Hegelians as looking admiringly at his
system, very much as the man in the fairy tale looked at the genie in
the bottle which, had he allowed it to come out, would carry him off.
Truth, however, which is long-lived, can always afford to wait; and
Schopenhauer, with something of the complacency of genius that is in
advance of its era, held his fingers on the public pulse and noted the
quickening which precedes a return to consciousness. Germany was waking
from her torpor. Already the influence of Hegel had begun to wane; his
school was split into factions, and his philosophy, which in solving
every problem had left the world nothing to do but to bore itself to
death, was slowly falling into disrepute. Moreover, the great class of
unattached scholars and independent thinkers, who cared as little for
University dogmas as they did for the threats of the Vatican, were
earnestly watching for some new teacher.

Schopenhauer was watching too; he knew that a change was coming, and
that he would come in with the change. He had but to wait. "My extreme
unction," he said, "will be my baptism; my death, a canonization."

Meanwhile old age had come upon him unawares, but with it the rich
fruition of lifelong study and reflection. The perfect tranquility in
which he passed his days had been utilized in strengthening and
expanding his work, and in 1843, in his fifty-sixth year, the second
and complementary volume of his philosophy was completed.

Twelve months later he wrote to Brockhaus, his publisher:--

"I may tell you in confidence that I am so well pleased with this
second volume, now that I see it in print, that I really think it will
be a great success.... If, now, in return for this great work, you are
willing to do me a very little favor, and one that is easily performed,
I will beg you each Easter to let me know how many copies have been
sold."

For two years he heard nothing, then in answer to a letter from him,
Brockhaus wrote:--

"In reply to your inquiry concerning the sale of your book, I can only
tell you that, to my sorrow, I have made a very poor business out of
it. Further particulars I cannot enter into."

"Many a rose," Schopenhauer murmured, as he refolded the note and
turned to other things.

In 1850, when, after six years' daily labor, he had completed his last
work, "Parerga und Paralipomena," his literary reputation was still so
insignificant that Brockhaus refused to publish it. Schopenhauer then
offered it, unavailingly, to half a dozen other publishers. No one
would have anything to do with it; the name which it bore would have
frightened a pirate, and the boldest in the guild was afraid to examine
its contents. "One thing is certain," said Schopenhauer, reflectively,
"I am unworthy of my contemporaries, or they of me." The "Parerga,"
however, in spite of the lack of allurement in its title, was not
destined to wither in manuscript. After much reconnoitring a publisher
was discovered in Berlin who, unwillingly, consented to produce it, and
thereupon two volumes of the most original and entertaining essays were
given to the public. For this work Schopenhauer received ten copies in
full payment.

Meanwhile a few adherents had rallied about him. Brockhaus, in an
attempt to make the best of a bad bargain, had marked the "Welt" down
to the lowest possible price, and a few copies had in consequence
fallen into intelligent hands. Among its readers there were some who
came to Frankfort to make the author's acquaintance; a proceeding
which pleased, yet alarmed Schopenhauer not a little.

One of them wrote to people with whom he was unacquainted, advising
them to read the work at once. "He is a fanatic," said Schopenhauer, in
complacent allusion to him, "a fanatic, that's what he is."

Dr. Gwinner, his subsequent biographer, whom he met about this time,
was his apostle, while Dr. Frauenstadt, another Boswell, whose
acquaintance he made at _table d'hôte_, he called his arch-evangelist,
and, not without pathos, repeated to him Byron's seductive lines,--

     "In the desert a fountain is springing,
       In the white waste there still is a tree,
     And a bird in the solitude singing,
       That speaks to my spirit of thee."

These gentlemen, together with a few others, made up a little band of
sturdy disciples, who went about wherever they could, speaking and
writing of the merits of Schopenhauer's philosophy. But the first note
of acclamation which, historically speaking, was destined to arouse the
thinking world, came, curiously enough, from England.

In 1853 the "Westminster Review" published a long and laudatory article
on Schopenhauer's philosophy; and this article Lindner, the editor of
the "Vossiche Zeitung," to whom Schopenhauer had given the title of
_doctor indefatigabilis_, reproduced in his own journal. In the
following year Dr. Frauenstadt published, in a well-written
pamphlet[3] which only needed a little more order and symmetry to be a
valuable handbook, a complete exposition of the doctrine; and the
applause thus stimulated reëchoed all over Germany. The "Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung," the "World as Will and Idea," which for so many years
had lain neglected, was dragged from its musty shelf like a Raphael
from a lumber-room; and the fame to which Schopenhauer had not made a
single step came to him as fame should, unsought and almost unbidden.

"My old age," he said, "is brighter now than most men's youth, for time
has brought its roses at last; but see," he added, touching his
silvered hair, "they are white."

From all sides now came evidences of the most cordial recognition. The
reviews and weeklies published anecdotes about him and extracts from
his works. Indeed, it was evident that the Iron Mask had escaped, and
that to Caspar Hauser light and air had at last been accorded.
Thinkers, scholars, and philosophers, of all creeds and colors, became
his attentive readers. Decorations were offered to him, which he
unostentatiously refused. The Berlin Academy, within whose walls Hegel
had reigned supreme, invited him to become one of its faculty. This
honor he also declined. "They have turned their back on me all my
life," he said, "and after my death they want my name to adorn their
catalogues." His philosophy was lectured upon at Breslau, and the
University of Leipsic offered it as a subject for a prize essay. All
this was very pleasant. Much to his indignation, however, for he was by
nature greatly disinclined to serve as pastime to an idle public, the
"Illustrirte Zeitung" published his likeness, and added insult to
injury by printing his name with two p's. Ah! how truly has it been
said that fame consists in seeing one's name spelt wrong in the
newspapers!

One of the most flattering manifestations of this sudden vogue was the
curiosity of the public, the number of enthusiasts that visited him,
and the eagerness with which artists sought to preserve his features
for posterity. To all this concert of praise it is difficult to say
that Schopenhauer lent a rebellious ear. The success of his philosophy
of disenchantment enchanted him. He accepted with the seriousness of
childhood the bouquets and sonnets which rained in upon him on his
subsequent birthdays, and in his letters to Frauenstadt alluded to his
ascending glory with innocent and amusing satisfaction:--

                    FRANKFORT, _September 23, 1854._

     ... A fortnight ago, a Dr. K., a teacher, came to see me; he
     entered the room and looked so fixedly at me that I began to
     be frightened, and then he cried out, "I must look at you, I
     will look at you, I came to look at you." He was most
     enthusiastic. My philosophy, he told me, restored him to
     life. What next?...

                    _June 29, 1855._

     ... B. called to-day; he had been here for twenty-four hours
     under an assumed name, and after many hesitations came in a
     closed carriage to pay his respects.... On taking leave, he
     kissed my hand. I screamed with fright....

                    _August 17, 1855._

     ... My portrait, painted by Lunteschütz, is finished and
     sold. Wiesike saw it in time, and bought it while it was
     still on the easel. But the unheard-of part of the whole
     matter is that he told me, and Lunteschütz too, that he was
     going to build a temple on purpose for it. That will be the
     first chapel erected in my honor. Recitativo, "Ja, ja,
     Sarastro herrschet hier."[4] What will be said of me, I
     wonder, in the year 2100?...

                    _September, 1855._

     ... Received a number of visits. Baehr, the Dresden painter
     and professor, came; he is a charming fellow, and pleased me
     very much. He knows all my works, and is full of them. He
     says, at Dresden every one is interested in them, especially
     the women, who, it appears, read me with passionate delight.
     Hornstein, a young composer, came also; he is a pupil of
     Richard Wagner, who, it seems, is also one of my students.
     Hornstein is still here, and pays me an exaggerated respect;
     for instance, when I want my waiter, he rises from table to
     summon him.... My portrait has been for a fortnight at the
     exposition. There has been a great crowd to see it. Von
     Launitz, the Frankfort Phidias, wants to take my bust....

                    _December 23, 1855._

     ... A gentleman has written to me from Zurich to say that in
     the club to which he belongs my works are read with such
     admiration that the members are crazy to get a picture of me
     of any kind, nature, or description, and that the artist who
     takes it has but to forward it C. O. D.... You see that my
     fame is spreading like a conflagration, and not in
     arithmetical ratio either, but in geometric, and even
     cubic....

                    _March 28, 1856._

     ... R., too, kissed my hand,--a ceremony to which I cannot
     accustom myself; yet it is one, I suppose, that forms part
     of my imperial dignity....

                    _June 6, 1856._

     ... Becher sent his son and nephew here, and Baehr sent his
     son also, and that only that these young people may in their
     old age be able to boast that they had seen and spoken to
     me....

                    _June 11, 1856._

     ... Professor Baehr, of Dresden, was here yesterday, and,
     penetrated with the most praiseworthy enthusiasm, wished to
     exchange his beautiful silver snuff-box for my forlorn old
     leather one. I refused, however. He told me of a certain
     Herr von Wilde, who was a perfect fanatic on the subject of
     my philosophy, and who, at the age of eighty-five, died with
     my name on his lips.

     My Buddha, re-gilded, glittering on his pedestal, gives you
     his benediction.

                    _August 14, 1856._

     ... Four pages and a half of Tallendier about me.[5] You
     have seen it, I suppose. French chatter, personal details,
     etc., but where the devil did he hear that I am "tout etonné
     du bruit que font mes écrits dans le monde?" I am so little
     astonished, that Emden told Nordwall, to the latter's
     intense surprise, that I had predicted to him my future
     celebrity fully twenty years ago....

Now, mediocrity may, of course, be praised, but, as Balzac has put it,
it is never discussed. And Schopenhauer, in the matter of discussion,
came in for his full share. He was praised and abused by turn. Like
every prominent figure, he made a good mark to fire at. Certain critics
said that he had stolen from Fichte and Schelling everything in his
philosophy that was worth reading, others abused him personally; and
one writer, a woman with whom he had refused to converse, and who had
probably expected to pay her hotel bill with the protocol of his
conversation, wrote a quantity of scurrilous articles about him. But
_censura perit, scriptum manet._ The criticisms are forgotten, while
his work still endures and, moreover, grows each year into surer and
stronger significance.

Among his visitors at the time was M. Foucher de Carsil, and the
portrait which that gentleman subsequently drew of him is so graphic
that it is impossible to resist the temptation of making the following
extract:[6]--

     "When I first saw him, in 1859, at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, at
     Frankfort, he was then an old man, with bright blue and
     limpid eyes. His lips were thin and sarcastic, and about them
     wandered a smile of shrewd intelligence. His high forehead
     was tufted on either side with puffs of white hair that gave
     to his physiognomy, luminous as it was with wit and malice, a
     stamp of nobility and distinction. His garments, his lace
     _jabot_, his white cravat, reminded me of that school of
     gentlemen who lived toward the close of the reign of Louis
     XV. His manners were those of a man accustomed to the best
     society; habitually reserved and timid even to suspicion, he
     rarely entered into conversation with any save his intimates
     and an occasional sympathetic traveler. His gestures were
     abrupt, and in conversation they became at once petulant and
     suggestive. He avoided discussions and combats in words, but
     he did so that he might the better enjoy the charm of
     familiar conversation. When he did speak, his imagination
     embroidered on the heavy canvas of the German tongue the
     most subtle and delicate arabesques that the Latin, Greek,
     French, English, or Italian languages were capable of
     suggesting. Indeed, when he cared to talk, his conversation
     possessed swing and precision, and joined thereto was a
     wealth of citation, an exactitude of detail, and such
     tireless flow of wit, as held the little circle of his
     friends charmed and attentive until far into the night. His
     words, clear-cut and cadenced, captivated his listener
     wholly: they both pictured and analyzed, a tremulous
     sensitiveness heightened their fervor, they were precise and
     exact on every topic. A German, who had traveled extensively
     in Abyssinia, was so astonished at the minute details which
     he gave on the different species of crocodiles, and their
     customs, that he thought that in him he recognized a former
     companion.

     "Happy are they who heard this last survivor of the
     conversationalists of the eighteenth century! He was a
     contemporary of Voltaire and of Diderot, of Helvetius and of
     Chamfort; his brilliant thoughts on women, on the part that
     mothers hold in the intellectual qualities of their children;
     his theories, profoundly original, on the connection between
     will and mind; his views on art and nature, on the life and
     death of the species; his remarks on the dull and wearisome
     style of those who write to say nothing, or who put on a mask
     and think with the thoughts of others; his pungent
     reflections on the subject of pseudonyms, and on the
     establishment of a literary censure for those journals which
     permitted neologisms, solecisms, and barbarisms; his
     ingenious hypotheses on magnetic phenomena, dreams, and
     somnambulism; his hatred of excess of every kind; his love of
     order; and his horror of obscurantism, 'qui, s'il n'est pas
     un péché contre le Saint Esprit en est un contre l'esprit
     humain,' make for him a physiognomy entirely different from
     any other of this century."

A few tags and tatters of these conversations have been preserved by
Dr. Frauenstadt,[7] and in them Schopenhauer is discovered sprawled at
ease, and expressing himself on a variety of topics with a
_disinvoltura_ and freedom of epithet which recalls the earlier
essayists. With them, as with him, periphrasis was avoided. Spades were
spades, not horticultural implements; and in one dialogue Frauenstadt
compliments his master in having, in breadth and reach of his polemic,
nothing in common with contemporary regard for ears polite. Citations
of this class, however, may well be omitted. A thinker in slippers, and
especially _in puris naturalibus_, is generally unattractive even to
those the least given to prudishness. But beyond certain instances of
this description, the scholar and man of the world is usually very
discernible. At times he is profound, at others vivacious; for
instance, he is asked what man would be if Nature, in making the last
step which leads to him, had started from the dog or the elephant; to
which he answers, in that case man would be an intelligent dog or an
intelligent elephant, instead of being an intelligent monkey. As may be
imagined, there was about Schopenhauer very little of the Sunday-school
theologian, and religion was in consequence seldom viewed by him from
an orthodox standpoint; when, therefore, Schleiermacher was quoted
before him to the effect that no man can be a philosopher who is not
religious, he observed very quietly, "No man who is religious can
become a philosopher,--metaphysics are useless to him, and no true
philosopher is religious; he is sometimes in danger, but he is not
fettered, he is free." Elsewhere he said, "Religion and philosophy are
like the two scales of a balance; the more one rises, the more does the
other descend."

In Schopenhauer's opinion, the greatest novels were "Tristram Shandy,"
"Wilhelm Meister," "Don Quixote," and the "Nouvelle Héloïse." To "Don
Quixote" he ascribed an allegorical meaning, but as an intellectual
romance he preferred "Wilhelm Meister" to all others. He believed in
clairvoyance, but not that man is a free agent; and it may be here
noted that, according to the most recent scientific opinion, man is a
free agent, _at most_, about once in twenty-four hours. "Everything
that happens, happens necessarily," he would say; and it was with this
maxim, of whose truth he had a variety of every-day examples, and with
the aid of the theory of the ideality of time, that he explained second
sight. "Everything is now that is to be," he said; "but with our
ordinary eyes we do not see it; the clairvoyant merely puts on the
spectacles of Time."

In the "Paränesen und Maximen," in which Schopenhauer chats quietly
with the reader and not with the disciple, many quaint and forcible
suggestions are to be found. For instance, among other things, he says,
"I accord my entire respect to any man who, when unoccupied, and
waiting for something, does not immediately begin to beat a tattoo with
his fingers, or toy with the object nearest his hand. It is probable
that such a man has thoughts of his own." His advice, too, on the
manner in which we should think and work is quite Emersonian in its
directness. It was, it may be added, the manner in which he thought and
worked, himself: "Have compartments for your thoughts and open but one
of them at a time; in this way each little pleasure you may have will
not be spoiled by some lumbering care; neither will one thought drive
out another, and an important matter will not swamp a lot of smaller
ones."

Such, vaguely outlined, was this great and interesting figure. With the
appearance of the "Parerga" his work was done. He lived ten years
longer in great seclusion, receiving only infrequent visits. "There,
where two or three are gathered together," he would say, and suggested
that his friends and believers should meet and consult without him.
Such literary labor as he then performed consisted mainly in
strengthening that which he had already written, and in making notes
and suggestions for future editions. At the age of seventy-two he died,
very peacefully though suddenly, leaving all his fortune to charitable
purposes.

In these pages no attempt has been made to enter into the details of
biography, for that pleasant task has been already well performed by
other and better equipped pens. The present writer has therefore only
sought to present such a view of Schopenhauer as might aid the general
reader to a clearer understanding of the doctrine which he was the
first to present, and which will be briefly considered in the next
chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: _Briefe über die Schopenhauer'sche Philosophie._]

[Footnote 4: "Yes, yes, Sarastro reigns herein."--Air from the _Magic
Flute_.]

[Footnote 5: An article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.]

[Footnote 6: _Hegel et Schopenhauer._ Paris: Hachette et Cie.]

[Footnote 7: _Arthur Schopenhauer. Von ihm, Ueber ihn._ Berlin.]




CHAPTER III.

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.]




CHAPTER IV.

THE BORDERLANDS OF HAPPINESS.


It was with something of the lassitude which succeeds an orgy that
Schopenhauer turned from the riot of the will and undertook to examine
such possibilities of happiness as life may yet afford, and, as
incidental thereto, the manner in which such possibilities may be most
enjoyed.

To this subject he brought a sumptuous variety of reflections, which
are summed up in a multi-colored essay, entitled "Lebensweisheit," or
Conduct of Life, but in which, in spite of the luxury of detail and
brilliancy of description, Schopenhauer almost unconsciously reminds
the reader of a man who takes his constitutional at midnight, and
preferentially when it rains.

The suggestions that occur to him are almost flamboyant in their
intensity, and yet about them all there circles such a series of dull
limitations that one somehow feels a sense of dumbness and suffocation,
a longing to get away and rush out into an atmosphere less charged with
sombre conclusions.

Concerning the baseness and shabbiness of every-day life Schopenhauer
has but little to say. He touches but lightly on its infinite
vulgarity, while its occasional splendor is equally unnoticed. Indeed,
he preaches not to redeem nor convert, but simply that his hearers may
be in some measure enlightened as to the bald unsatisfactoriness of all
things, and so direct their individual steps as to come as little in
contact with avoidable misery as possible. To many it will, of course,
seem quite appalling that a mind so richly receptive as his should have
chosen such shaggy moorlands for habitual contemplation, when, had he
wished, he might have feasted his eyes on resplendent panoramas. The
moorlands, however, were not of his making; he was merely a painter
filling in the landscape with objects which stood within the
perspective, and if he happened upon no resplendent panoramas, the
fault lay simply in the fact that he had been baffled in his attempt to
find them.

Voltaire says, somewhere, "I do not know what the life eternal may be,
but at all events this one is a very poor joke." In this sentiment
Schopenhauer solemnly concurred. That which was a _boutade_ to the one
became a theory to the other, and it is to his treatment of this
subject that the attention of the reader is now invited. The
introduction which he gives to it, if not as light as the overture to a
ballet, will, it is believed, still be found both interesting and
instructive, while its conclusion and supplement form, it may be noted,
an admitted part of that which is best of the modern essayists.

The first chapter opens with an enumeration of those possessions which
differentiate the lot of man, and which in so doing form the basis of
possible happiness. It has been said that the happiest land is the one
which has little, if any, need of importations, and he notes that the
man is most contented whose interior wealth suffices for his own
amusement, and who demands but little, if anything, from the exterior
world. Or, as Oliver Goldsmith has expressed it,--

     "Still to ourselves in ev'ry place consigned
     Our own felicity we make or find."

"In a world such as ours," Schopenhauer thinks, "he who has much to
draw upon from within is not unlike a room in which stands a Christmas
tree, bright, warm, and joyous, while all about are the snows and
icicles of a December night."

That which a man is in himself, that which accompanies him into
solitude, and which none can give him or take from him, is necessarily
more essential than all that he may possess or all that he may appear
in the eyes of others. The scholar, for instance, even when utterly
alone feeds most agreeably on his own thoughts, and we are most of us
very well aware that he whose intelligence is limited may ceaselessly
vary his festivals and amusements without ever succeeding in freeing
himself from the baleful weariness of boredom.

According to Schopenhauer, then, the supreme and all-important elements
of earthly happiness are subjective possessions, such as a noble
character, a capable mind, an easy disposition, and a well-organized
and healthy body; and it is these gifts, he rightly insists, that
should be cultivated and preserved, even at the expense of wealth and
emolument. An easy disposition, however, is that which above all other
things contributes most directly to contentment. Gayety of heart is,
indeed, its own recompense, and he who is really gay has a reason for
so being from the very fact that he is so. Supposing a man to be young,
handsome, rich, and respected, the one question to be asked about him
is, Is he light-hearted? On the other hand, if he is light-hearted,
little does it matter whether he is young or old, straight-limbed or
deformed, poor or rich; in any case he is contented. It is
light-heartedness alone which is, so to speak, the hard cash of
happiness; all the rest is but the note-of-hand; and in making this
observation, he (Schopenhauer) is careful to point out that there is
nothing that contributes so little to gayety as wealth, and nothing
that contributes so much thereto as health. "It is in the lower
classes, among the laborers, and particularly among the tillers of the
soil, that gayety and contentment are to be found, while on the other
hand, the faces of the great and the rich generally present an
expression of sullen constraint. To thoroughly understand, however, how
greatly happiness depends on gayety of disposition and the state of
health, it is only necessary to compare the impression which the same
circumstances and similar wants bring to us in days of health and
vigor, with that which is paramount when through our condition we are
predisposed to dullness and discontent. In brief, it is not the event
itself, but the way in which we view it, that makes or unmakes our
happiness." Or, as Epictetus said long ago, man is not moved by things,
but by his opinion of them.

As a general rule, nine tenths of happiness may be said to rest on the
state of health; when this is perfect, anything and everything may be a
source of pleasure; in illness, on the other hand, nothing, no matter
what its nature may be, is capable of affording any real enjoyment. It
follows, therefore, that it is wanton stupidity to sacrifice health for
any purpose, even for wealth and fame, and especially to passing and
fugitive pleasures, however alluring they may appear.

The next class of possessions of which Schopenhauer treats is property;
and in considering this division he seems not unlike that contented
individual who, on seeing a quantity of objects exposed for sale,
exclaimed pensively, "How much there is of which I have no need!"

Every man, it will be admitted, has his own horizon, beyond which his
pretensions do not extend. They reach the edge, but they do not cross
it. In other words, the absence of those possessions with which a man
is unacquainted is in no sense a privation to him; and it is probably
for this reason that the day-laborer bothers himself so little about
the flaring wealth of the rich. Wealth, on the other hand, is like
salt water; the more one drinks, the greater the thirst. But, even so,
this grim philosopher was far from despising it. "It is a rampart
against an incalculable number of discomforts; and it is in this manner
that it should be viewed, instead of being considered, as is generally
the case, in the light of a permission to procure a diversity of
pleasure."

As a practical man, Schopenhauer saw nothing that could make his ink
blush in repeatedly recommending the preservation of a fortune, made or
inherited; "for even," he says, "if it simply suffices to permit its
possessor to live without the necessity of labor, it is still an
inappreciable advantage in that it brings with it an exemption from the
general drudgery which is the ordinary lot of man. It is only on this
condition that man is born free, master of his hour and his strength,
and enabled to say each morning, 'The day is mine.' The difference,
therefore, between him who has a thousand crowns a year and the
landlord whose rent-roll runs into millions is infinitely less than the
difference between the first and the man who has nothing."

If the man whose necessities are provided for is inclined to follow
Schopenhauer's advice, he will, first of all, seek in repose and
leisure the avoidance of every form of discomfort; especially will he
seek to lead a tranquil and unpretentious existence which, so far as
possible, will be sheltered from all intruders. After having for a
certain time kept up relations with what is termed the world, he will
prefer a retired life; and if he is of superior intelligence, he will
give himself up to solitude. This he will do, because the more a man
possesses in himself, the less he has need of the exterior world.
Superiority of intelligence will therefore lead him to insociability;
for, as Schopenhauer says, "It is precisely in solitude, where each of
us is dependent on his own resources, that every one is brought face to
face with his own individuality; there the imbecile in his purple
groans beneath the weight of his miserable self, while he who is
mentally gifted peoples and animates with his thoughts the most arid
and desert region."

Now, it may be objected that contentment is not to be found in an idle
folding of the hands behind a hedge set against vexation. Nor is this
Schopenhauer's meaning. Wealth is but the means, not the source of
contentment. It is not the certainty of an income that brings
happiness, for its accompanying affranchisement from want carries the
tenant to the opposite pole of misery, where gapes the hydra, ennui.
And it is there that he whose necessities are provided for surely
lands, unless he fills the hour with some one of the many elevated
pursuits from which those who are obliged to work for their bread are
in a great measure debarred.

The third and last class of possessions that Schopenhauer discusses is
that which a man represents; or, in other words, the manner in which
he appears to his neighbors. "There is," he says, "no superstition more
universally dominant than that which leads us to attach a high value to
the opinion of others; and whether it be that this superstition has its
roots in our very nature, or that it has followed us up from the birth
of society and civilization, it is none the less certain that it
influences our conduct in a manner which is incommensurate, and hostile
to our well-being. This influence may be traced from the point in which
it shows itself beneath the anxious and servile deference to the _qu'en
dira-t-on_, to that in which it drives the dagger of Virginius into his
daughter's heart, or else to where it leads men to sacrifice their
peace, their fortune, their wealth, and their lives, for the sake of
posthumous renown."

The existence, however, which we lead in the minds of others is a
possession, Schopenhauer has carefully explained, which, through a
singular weakness, while highly prized is yet entirely unimportant to
our happiness. Indeed, if the comparison be drawn between that which we
are in reality and that which we are in the eyes of others, it will be
seen that the first term of the comparison comprises our entire
existence, for its sphere of action is in our own perceptions, while,
on the other hand, that which we represent acts on other minds than our
own, and in consequence has no direct existence for us, and an indirect
one only so far as it may influence their conduct toward us. The
wealthy, in their uttermost magnificence, can but say, "Our happiness
is entirely outside of us; it dwells in the minds of others."
Certainly, to a happiness of this description every thinker is
indifferent, or will necessarily become so as he grows aware of the
superficiality and dullness of mind, the narrow sentiments and limited
ideas, the absurdity of opinion and numberless errors, which go to the
making of his neighbor's brain. Indeed, it is generally sufficient to
note with what contempt half-a-dozen imbeciles will speak of some
distinguished man, to be quite ready to agree with Schopenhauer that in
according a high value to the opinion of others we are paying them an
honor which they in no sense deserve.

It is essential to our well-being to thoroughly understand the simple
fact that each one lives but in his own particular skin and not in the
opinion of others, and that, therefore, our actual condition as
determined by health, temperament, intellect, wife, children, and home,
is a hundred times more important than what it may please others to
think about us; fame, of course, is very pleasant; so is glory; but,
after all, what do they amount to? As has been seen, Leopardi snapped
his fingers at them both. To him they were simply illusions.
Schopenhauer goes more deeply into the subject, and explains with great
opulence of detail and fantasy of adjective that glory and fame are
founded on that which a man is in comparison to others; in other words,
that their value is purely relative, and would disappear entirely if
every one became that which a celebrity is already. It is not fame that
is so desirable, but rather the merit which should precede it. "The
predisposing conditions are, so to speak, the substance, while glory
itself is but the accident, which works on its possessor as an exterior
symptom, and confirms his own high opinion of himself. But this symptom
is yet not infallible, for is there not glory without merit and merit
without fame?"

As glory is incontestably but the echo, the image, the shadow, the
simulachre of merit, and as in any case that which is admirable should
be more highly valued than the admiration that it excites, it follows
that that which causes happiness does not consist in glory, but rather
in the attracting force of merit; or, to put it more exactly, in the
possession of such character and faculties as predispose thereto.

To be deserving of fame is, then, its own exceeding great reward. There
all the honor lies, and necessarily this must be true, "for, as a rule,
the reverberation of a glory that is to echo through future ages rarely
reaches the ears of him who is the object; and though certain instances
to the contrary may be objected, yet they have usually been due to
fortuitous circumstances which are otherwise without great importance.
Men lack ordinarily the proper balance of judgment which is necessary
for the appreciation of superior productions; and in these matters they
usually take the opinion of others, and that, too, in such wise that
ninety-nine admirers out of a hundred accord their praise at the nod of
one." It is for this reason that the approbation of one's
contemporaries, however numerous their voices may be, has so slight a
value for the thinker, for at best he can hearken to the voices of the
few, which in themselves may be but the effect of the moment. "Would a
virtuoso be greatly flattered by the applause of his public if he
learned that, with but two or three exceptions, the auditorium was
filled with deaf mutes who, to conceal their infirmity, clapped a loud
approval so soon as they saw a real listener move his hands? And how
would it be if he knew the leaders of the clique were often paid to
procure a great success to the most insignificant scraper of cat-gut?"

It is with reflections of this description that Schopenhauer explains
why it is that sudden celebrity so rarely passes into immortal glory,
and points--

                  ... "how hard it is to climb
     The heights where Fame's proud temple shines afar,"

and even, the summit gained, the uselessness of it all.

This same conclusion has been reached by several other writers, notably
by Leopardi, whose views have been already explained, and by Von
Hartmann, whose theories are mentioned in the next chapter; but the
main idea has perhaps been best expressed by D'Alembert, who, in
speaking of the temple of fame, says, "Its interior is inhabited only
by the dead who were not there in their life-time, and by certain
aspirants who are shown the door as soon as they die."

To sum up what Schopenhauer has set forth, and of which the foregoing
detached ideas can give at best but a lame conception, we find that to
his mind, as perhaps to that of every serious thinker, the first and
most essential condition of contentment is the quality of character;
and this would be essential if only because it is always in action, but
it is so, even to a greater extent, because it is the only possession
which cannot in some manner be taken from us. In this sense he
considers its value as absolute when opposed to the relative value of
mere possessions and the opinion of others. In brief, man is not so
susceptible to the influence of the exterior world as it is generally
supposed, for only Time can exercise his sovereign rights upon him.
Beneath this force the physical and intellectual qualities wane and
gradually succumb, the moral character alone remaining invulnerable.

Considered in this connection, actual possessions and the opinions
which others hold concerning us have this advantage over character:
they need not necessarily be affected by time; moreover, being
accessible in their nature they both may be acquired, while, on the
other hand, character once established remains invariable for life.
Schopenhauer evidently does not hold with him who sings--

     "That men may rise on stepping-stones
     Of their dead selves, to higher things."

All that can be done, he has explained, is to employ the individuality,
such as it is, to the greatest profit; or, in other words, a man should
pursue only those aspirations which correspond to his disposition, and
only choose in consequence that occupation and walk of life which is
best suited to it.

From the preponderance thus given to the first of these three divisions
over the two others, it follows that it is far better to watch over
health and the development of the intellect than it is to attend to the
acquisition of wealth. Schopenhauer, of course, does not mean that the
acquisition of that which is necessary to one's proper maintenance
should be in any wise neglected; far from it. His idea is simply that a
superfluity of riches, instead of contributing to well-being, brings
with it an inevitable vexation in the constant care which the
management of a large fortune demands.

Briefly, then, the essential element of contentment is that which one
is in himself, and it is simply because the dose is ordinarily so small
that the majority of those who have been conquerors in the struggle
with want feel themselves to be as thoroughly unhappy as those who are
still in the thick of the fight. But still, whatever the issue of the
conflict may be, each one among us is enjoined to aspire to a good
repute. Honor is an inappreciable belonging, and glory, the most
exquisite of all that is within the reach of man, is the Golden Fleece
of the elect.

The second and third divisions have upon each other a reciprocal
effect: wealth brings with it the good opinion of others, and the good
opinion of others has aided many a man on the road to fortune; taken
together they represent over again the _habes, haberis_ of Petronius,
yet the factors that reside within us contribute more liberally to
contentment than those which are born of things.

It is somewhat in this manner, but with a concise

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