CHAPTER I
SCHOPENHAUER'S LIFE
Arthur Schopenhauer led the outwardly uneventful life of a scholar and a thinker, taking no part in public affairs. The great movements in European history, through which he lived, left him untroubled and unmoved in his scholar's seclusion. There is little therefore to chronicle with regard to the outer history of his life. It is the more easy to escape the criticism of Schopenhauer himself, who says that "those who, instead of studying the thoughts of a philosopher, make themselves acquainted with his life and history, are like people who instead of occupying themselves with a picture, are rather occupied with its frame, reflecting on the taste of its carving and the nature of its gilding."
The little that there is to tell is, however, of great significance with regard to the development of his thought. For of no philosopher can it be more truly said than of Schopenhauer, that his thought is the expression of his character.
Schopenhauer was born at Dantzig on February 22, 1788. He traced his descent through both parents to Dutch ancestors. The family had settled at Dantzig in the course of commerce. For several generations the head of the family had combined the career of a merchant with landed pursuits. Schopenhauer's great-grandfather, Andreas Schopenhauer, leased one of the large farms belonging to the municipality, while following the business of a merchant. His son Andreas acquired property near Dantzig, and there the father of the philosopher, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, was born. Some mental weakness seems to have been inherited. The eldest son of Andreas was an imbecile from his youth, and the other children, with the exception of Schopenhauer's father, all had some curious mental or moral twist. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, however, was a man of strong intelligence and character. He followed a merchant's career with great success, raising his firm to the first position in the town. He was a disciple of the school of Voltaire, read French and English literature, and had a keen admiration for English life and institutions. His wife, Johanna, belonged, too, to one of the leading families of Dantzig. She had been educated on broader lines than was usual for girls at the time, and had a love for art and letters which extended her interests beyond the domestic concerns of her home. Later on, during her widowhood, these were to find a wider field and opportunity, and she became a well-known authoress in the Germany of her day. She married in 1785, at the age of eighteen, being twenty years younger than her husband. The marriage was an unhappy one, owing to differences of temperament. There were two children of the marriage. They suffered for the incompatibilities of their parents. Both were burdened with abnormally strong desires for the pleasures of life, together with an extraordinary capacity for suffering.
Arthur, the future philosopher, was the first child of the marriage. He was given the name of Arthur to satisfy the cosmopolitanism of his father, the name being spelt alike in several languages. His earliest years were spent at the country house near Dantzig, or at the farm, between the sea and the pine-woods, which had been rented many years before by his great-grandfather.
In 1793, when Schopenhauer was five years old, the family migrated to Hamburg. The "free city" of Dantzig, which had a constitution of its own, was annexed by Prussia in 1793, at the second partition of Poland, and Heinrich Schopenhauer was too stern a republican to adapt himself to the new rule. He carried on his business in Hamburg for the next twelve years, but never became a naturalised citizen.
He had resolved that his son should follow the family career of a merchant, and his education was planned accordingly on those lines. He was taken to France in 1797, and left at Havre for two years. For the next three years he attended a private school at Hamburg. During this time, discontent with his father's plans for his future was gradually ripening within him. To reconcile him, he was promised a trip to France and England, on the condition that he promised to give up his own desires and ambitions, and to be loyal to his father's wishes. The prospect of the journey was too alluring, and he gave the required promise. After six weeks had been spent in London, his parents left him at a boarding-school at Wimbledon. In letters to his mother, he complains of the mechanical instruction, the dreary Sunday services, and the tedious routine of the school. She, in reply, warns him not to give way to bombast and empty pathos.
He became proficient in English, and always held English character and intelligence in admiration, although he was impressed by the prevalent hypocrisy and the oppressive pietism of the time. He was busy already recording his impressions, describing characteristically the feelings and ideas awakened in him rather than the actual facts and events. The travellers returned through France, from Geneva to Vienna, and thence to Berlin.
For about four months Schopenhauer now worked in a Dantzig office, trying to acquire the rudiments of a business training. When almost seventeen, he entered the employment of a firm in Hamburg. He himself has recorded that there never was a worse clerk in a merchant's office. In his leisure, and during office hours whenever possible, he was reading voraciously.
In 1805 his father died, whether by accident or by his own hand remains uncertain. For two years longer Schopenhauer stuck to his hated task, out of loyalty to his father, and the promise made him some years earlier. But at last he could stifle his ambitions and yearnings towards a purely intellectual life no longer, and he obtained his mother's consent to leave his office, and to begin preparation for a learned career.
His mother meanwhile, with her daughter Adèle, had left Hamburg and settled at Weimar, at that time the intellectual centre of Germany. Goethe was here the sun round which the lesser lights of the artistic and intellectual world revolved. At the age of forty, Johanna Schopenhauer had entered on a new life, and was finding scope and free development for untried capabilities. She played a prominent part in the social life of the place, and her receptions were remarkable for the circle she gathered round her. Goethe himself was a frequent visitor there. She also took part in the theatrical performances, which were so conspicuous a feature of the life at Weimar. With help and encouragement from Fernow, a distinguished scholar and art critic, she began to write, and published with considerable popular success travel sketches, art biographies, and novels. Her daughter, in describing their life at Weimar, tells how her mother experienced ever fresh delight in intercourse with the famous men living there. "She was liked, her society was agreeable. Her pleasing manners made her house a centre of intellectual activity, where everyone felt at home, and freely contributed the best he had to bring." Besides Goethe, Schlegel, Grimm, Wieland and others were frequent guests under her roof. Freed from his hated bondage, Schopenhauer now left Hamburg and entered the gymnasium, or grammar school, at Gotha, but a lampoon on one of the masters was so resented that he was obliged to leave. He then came to Weimar, at his mother's suggestion, and worked at classics in the house of a well-known scholar, who had a real enthusiasm for all things Greek. Something of his spirit he communicated to his pupil, and the passion for Greek art and thought grew into a moulding principle in Schopenhauer's views of life and religion. At the same time that he was entering into the spirit of classical literature, he was cultivating his musical ability, and thus feeling his way towards a full and intense understanding of the art, which entered later with such significance into the development of his philosophy. He was striving to realise an ideal of the fullest and most complete culture, in which not only the life of thought, but also the life of art should find consummate satisfaction.
The estrangement between his mother and himself began to widen now that they were thrown constantly together. By arrangement, he dined daily with her, and came to her receptions. But Schopenhauer was too uncontrolled in his temper, and too uncompromising in his egoism to make an agreeable companion. His mother, driven to write to him, asserts that his constant grumbling, gloomy looks, and intolerant dogmatism depress her. It is necessary to her happiness to know that he is happy, but not necessary that she should be a witness to it. Therefore, if they are to agree they must consent to live apart. Both mother and son were bent on self-development, and in character were too dissimilar to understand each other. Schopenhauer was jealous, uncontrolled in his moods, and boorish in his manners. That all-consuming egoism, which all his life spoiled his relations with everyone with whom he came in contact, made a congenial family life impossible. He resented his mother's freedom and independence, and insulted her friends. In a way that is very characteristic of him, he generalises from his own personal experience, and in his views on women we find reflected all the bitterness which had grown round the relations between himself and his mother.
In 1809 he attained his majority, and received his share of his father's fortune, amounting to about £150 a year. He was now independent, and could pursue the career he had marked out for himself. He valued all his life the liberty which this competency secured him. A draft dedication, intended for the second edition of The World as Will and Idea, was addressed "to the manes of my father. Noble, beneficent spirit! to whom I owe everything that I am.... As thou didst bring into the world a son such as I am, thou didst also make provision that in a world like this, such a son should be able to subsist and to develop himself.... In my mind the tendency to its only proper vocation was too decidedly implanted to let me do violence to my nature, and so to subjugate it that, recking nought of existence in general, and active only for my personal existence, it should find its sole task in procuring daily bread.... Thou seemest to have foreseen that thy son, thou proud republican, could not possess the talent to compete in cringing before ministers and councillors, Mæcenases, and their advisers, basely to beg for the hard-earned piece of bread, or to flatter self-conceited commonplaceness, and humbly join himself to the eulogistic retinue of bungling charlatans.... That I could expand the forces nature gave me and apply them to their destined purpose, that I could follow my natural instinct and think and work for beings without number, while no one does anything for me, for that I thank thee, my father, thank thy activity, prudence, thrift, and provision for the future."
In 1809 he entered the University of Göttingen as a student of medicine. In his second year he changed his course to philosophy. Wieland, the poet, on the occasion of a visit from Schopenhauer, tried to dissuade him from philosophy as a career. The reply was, "Life is a ticklish business. I have decided to spend it in reflecting on it."
In 1811 Schopenhauer left Göttingen, and entered the University of Berlin. Here, too, he gave special attention to natural science. Throughout his notebooks are scattered critical remarks on his teachers and their lectures. Fichte especially was a butt for his sarcasms. Against a statement of Schleiermacher's, that "No man can be a philosopher without being religious," he writes, "No man who is religious takes to philosophy: he does not need it."
The Napoleonic wars were at this time disorganising the whole of Europe. Berlin was in the hands of a French garrison. But after the disastrous campaign of Napoleon in Russia, the entire nation rose against the invader. University classes were broken up. Fichte stayed behind to nurse the wounded, and died next year at his post. Schopenhauer, a prey to fears, which tormented him all his life, fled for safety to Dresden. He settled finally at Rudolstadt, and wrote there an essay, to qualify for the degree of doctor of philosophy at Jena. This he obtained, and his essay was published as A Philosophical Treatise on the Four-fold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. This work he describes in his later books as a preliminary part of his system, which must be studied if the remainder is to be understood. It is written entirely under the influence of Kant. The title refers to the four branches of knowledge: physical science, mathematics, logic, and ethics.
After the publication of his book, Schopenhauer returned to Weimar, and stayed for a few months with his mother. The experiment resulted in complete estrangement. He was overbearing and dogmatic, insulting his mother's friends, and censorious towards herself. She wrote to him again, to avoid an unpleasant personal interview, and complained of his contemptuous bearing and peremptory manner. He left Weimar and never saw his mother again, although she lived for twenty-four years after their separation. It is a curious commentary on his relations to his parents, that his highest praise of his father lay in the fact that he had, by his thrift, left his son an adequate income; and that his main censure on his mother is that she spends her money too negligently.
His visits to his mother at Weimar were of considerable importance in the subsequent development of his thought, for it was there that he made the acquaintance, not only of Goethe, who influenced him profoundly for a time, but also of F. Mayer, the orientalist, who directed his attention to the philosophical literature of ancient India. This literature left a permanent mark upon his mind.
For the next four years he lived at Dresden. In 1816 he published an essay On Vision and Colours, which has reference to the controversy which Goethe was waging on the theory of light. Schopenhauer's theory is fantastic. It is not submitted to experimental evidence, and rests, as he admits, on "intuitive" certainty.
This early work is hardly in the direct line of the development of Schopenhauer's thought. It is really a deviation, for which Goethe's all-compelling influence is responsible. Goethe was at first inclined to regard Schopenhauer as an opponent, for the essay is rather a transformation of Goethe's theory than an expansion of it.
His residence at Dresden was the best he could have chosen from the point of view of his own system of philosophy. Here he could study better than in almost any other town of Europe the works of art, in which he was to see a revelation of the meaning of life. The art collections of the town are among the most famous in Europe, and the music, both operatic and orchestral, was then, as now, of the highest quality. In this home of art, Schopenhauer's great system was now taking shape.
During his daily walks along the banks of the Elbe, he was thinking out his theories, making notes occasionally in a note-book, and then striding on again with the rapid pace by which he was recognised even as an old man.
More and more strongly it was borne in upon him that "inward discord is the very law of human nature." All his life his thoughts had struck the note of genuine pessimism. He was always in revolt against the pain and misery that lie hidden beneath the surface of life. That this pessimistic bias was fundamentally one of temperament, there can be no doubt. In letters to him from his mother, we find her constantly urging him, even as a child, to look upon the brighter side of things. In a letter written to him in 1806, she writes, "I could tell you things that would make your hair stand on end, but I refrain, for I know how you love to brood over human misery in any case."
Even in happiness and success he recognised illusion. Everywhere in nature we see strife and conflict. One species preys upon another. The "will to live" necessarily expresses itself as a struggle.
Hegel at this time reigned supreme in the kingdom of philosophy. It was hardly possible to escape his influence. Schopenhauer, in striving to give expression to a system which would lay bare the real inner nature of our life and destiny, was at the same time protesting passionately against the Hegelian view. It was as a protest against the all-powerful idealism of this philosophy that his system was directed in the first place. He represents a reaction against the absorption of everything in reason. As opposed to this view, Schopenhauer urged the priority of the will and the feelings as the fundamental factors in determining the mental life.
The will is the reality behind all life. The intellect is merely a tool in the service of the will. It is impossible to find in reason a complete knowledge of the essence of the world. A merely intellectual philosophy of life is bound to be thin and hollow, and we should aim rather at a clear and direct insight into life.
Now the will, into which every form of life can be resolved, is the source of all human misery and unhappiness. The only way in which men can free themselves from the bondage of the will, and throw off its yoke, is by looking upon beauty. It is in art that eternal truth is revealed with a directness and certainty to which science never attains. This theory is connected with the Platonic theory of Ideas. The real inner nature of things, the Ideas in the Platonic sense, are revealed in creative and imaginative art. The faculty of vision, which enables men to divine this reality behind appearances, and to interpret it to others, is the gift of the artistic genius. He "understands the half-uttered speech of nature, and articulates clearly what she only stammered forth." The man of genius produces works of art by intuitive insight. He sees through the outer shell to the inner significance that lies at the heart of things. Genius is the faculty of renouncing entirely one's own personality for the time being, so as to become clear vision of the world, free of subjectivity. The genius must have imagination, above all things, in order to see in things not that which nature has actually made, but that which she endeavoured to make, but could not.
Art, however, does not deliver us permanently from life, but only for moments. It is therefore not a path out of life, but only an occasional consolation in life.
It is the saint, who through the surrender of all willing, through the intentional mortification of his own desires, attains to true resignation. Happiness and unhappiness become then a matter of indifference, and the spell of the illusion, which held us chained in the bonds of this world, is broken for ever.
These were the views which found expression in Schopenhauer's great work, The World as Will and Idea, which was finished in 1818. He found a publisher in Brockhaus of Leipsic. While the work was going through the press, he attacked his publisher with such violent rudeness, that Brockhaus wrote declining all further correspondence with one "whose letters in their supreme coarseness and rusticity savour more of the cabman than of the philosopher."
The work appeared when Schopenhauer was thirty years of age, an extraordinarily early date at which to produce so complete and elaborate a system of philosophy. In this work the outlines of his whole system are permanently fixed. The whole contains, he says, but a single thought. That thought exhibits itself as metaphysics, æsthetics, and ethics. He wrote later many essays and supplements, but these all go towards confirmation and expansion of his earlier work. For the rest of his life he was repeating his original theories, with infinite variation in expression. This is entirely in accord with his own theory of age. At thirty, he maintained, the intellectual and moral endowment has reached its highest development. All that is done later is to vary and expand the main principles already laid down.
His book fell still-born from the press. Twenty years later he succeeded in getting his publishers to undertake a second edition, but this too received but scant recognition. Schopenhauer had built great hopes on his work, and his disappointment was bitter when no word of notice greeted its appearance. "I dread silence about my system, as a burnt child dreads the fire," he wrote on one occasion. When bringing his manuscript to the notice of the publisher, he had written that the work "would hereafter be the source of a hundred other books." He confided to a disciple that upon completing the work, he had felt so convinced that he had solved the enigma of the world, that he had thought of having his signet-ring carved with the image of the sphinx throwing herself down the abyss. "My philosophy," he wrote, "is the real solution of the enigma of the world. In this sense it may be called a revelation."
Before the book appeared, Schopenhauer travelled to Italy. He first spent some weeks in Venice, where Byron was living at the time. The two, however, did not meet. He then set out for Rome, by way of Bologna and Florence, and there he spent the winter. His time was spent mostly in the art collections, and in the study of Italian. He kept, as he always did in travelling, a diary, recording not so much his observations on things seen, as his moods and moralisings on them.
In May of the following year, as he was returning home, he received the news of the bankruptcy of the Dantzig house in which almost the entire means of his mother and his sister were invested. He himself had a far smaller amount at stake. The business arrangements connected with the winding-up of the firm, which his mother accepted, were not to Schopenhauer's taste, and the estrangement between himself and his relatives now became permanent. He showed his usual promptness to suspect evil, and his angry accusations were so bitter, that a silence of eleven years fell between himself and his mother and sister. His struggle with the firm in question lasted for two years. Schopenhauer came off triumphant financially, his capital with interest being paid in full, whereas the other creditors obtained only thirty per cent.
His great work having now been launched in the philosophical world, Schopenhauer turned his thoughts to the chances of an academic appointment. After many inquiries he decided finally on Berlin, and made an application. Specimen copies of his published works were sent in, and a private trial lecture delivered. Here in 1820 he began his career as assistant lecturer, and a course of lectures was announced, of six hours a week, on philosophy in general. He chose as his lecture hour the very time at which Hegel delivered his principal course, thinking to enter into direct competition with him, and carry off his students. His hopes, however, misled him. The students were not to be beguiled away from the omnipotent Hegel, and Schopenhauer's course was a complete failure. He was not a good lecturer, and the course fell through before the end of the term. The lectures were never again delivered.
The six years he spent in Berlin were not in other respects happy ones. He was on bad terms with all his colleagues, and even in his private life he contrived to bring worry and legal trouble upon himself. In a small entrance hall, common ground to himself and another lodger, he, one day, found three women engaged in conversation. He demanded their withdrawal. Two complied, but one, a sempstress lodging in the same house, refused. Thereupon Schopenhauer, stick in hand, threw her forcibly twice out of the house. She fell, and on the following day brought her case before the court. After six months, the verdict went in Schopenhauer's favour, but an appeal was lodged, and, in his absence, the court inflicted a fine of twenty thalers, as compensation for injuries inflicted. Some months later the sempstress brought a further action. She claimed that her injuries were more serious than had first appeared, and that she was now permanently incapacitated for work. Schopenhauer was condemned to pay her sixty thalers a year as aliment, and five-sixths of the costs of the case. This sum he paid until the time of her death, twenty years later. On her death certificate he wrote, "obit anus, abit onus." The episode throws light on the character of the philosopher, with its marked strain of coarseness and ill-controlled passion.
Meanwhile, Schopenhauer continued to philosophise, still hoping against hope for the university professorship, which never came, but sustained by immense self-confidence in the importance of his message. He lived at Berlin in absolute seclusion. Social life had no attractions for him. He was a constant visitor to the theatre, the opera-house, and the concert-room, and at home his flute was a constant diversion. These were his chief distractions.
From time to time the thought of marriage had entered into his plans, but his habits of solitude were growing stronger, and his cynical views on women were obtaining an ever firmer hold on his mind. His nature was strongly sensual, and intermittent amorous experience is not the best school in which to foster the growth of fine feeling or noble thoughts on the relations of the sexes. It is not surprising to find, therefore, in his views on women the unmistakable stamp of his personal experience, a fatal blindness to all but the physical side of sex. The subject is not one that he passes over with indifference, for it amounts almost to an obsession with him. He left behind him notes on love and marriage, which were held by his literary executor to be unfit for publication, and these were burned accordingly.
It was during these years at Berlin, embittered by the lack of recognition of his philosophical work, and by his failure in the academic world, that his attacks on university professors grew so virulent. He attributed his failure in both respects to conspiracy on the part of those in power. His attacks on Hegel grew ever fiercer.
In 1829 he was anxious to undertake a translation into English of Kant's chief works. He wrote to the publishers, urging his claims, saying "a century may pass before there shall again meet in the same head so much Kantian philosophy with so much English, as happen to dwell together in mine." The proposal came to nothing, and Kant's Critique had to wait for nearly ten years longer before it appeared in an English form.
In 1831 the cholera broke out in Berlin, and Schopenhauer immediately took to flight. Hegel was one of the victims of this outbreak. In one of his later works, Schopenhauer describes how he had been moved to leave Berlin, on the entry of the cholera, by means of a dream. He had dreamed of a little schoolfellow and playmate, who died in childhood, "It may have been," he says, "of hypothetical truth, a warning in short, that if I had remained, I should have died of the cholera. Immediately after my arrival in Frankfurt, I was the subject of a perfectly distinct apparition, as I believe, of my parents, and signifying that I should survive my mother, who was still alive; my father, already deceased, carried a light in his hand." This is significant, as showing Schopenhauer's belief in the supernatural, and in mystical influences.
After leaving Berlin, Schopenhauer settled at Frankfurt, and with the exception of one year, which was spent at Mannheim, he lived there until his death twenty-seven years later. For twenty years after coming to Frankfurt he lived in entire isolation. Now and again, at rare intervals, an article from his pen appeared, but this is the only sign of life. We hear nothing of his personal life during this period. Friends he seems to have had none, and all personal intercourse with acquaintances invariably came to an abrupt end, owing to his intolerant attitude towards those who dared to disagree with any of his views.
Only when he reaches the verge of old age do we once again have some record of him. This latter part of his life was spent with unvaried regularity. His chief occupation and solace is philosophy. His daily routine was mapped out, according to a regular plan, which hardly varied from day to day. He worked during the forenoon for three or four hours. At noon he enjoyed half an hour's relaxation on the flute. He dined daily at a hotel. After an hour's rest, the afternoon was given up to lighter literature. His favourite authors, among poets, were Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Calderon. The study of the great classical writers was all his life his greatest delight. The degradation in style of contemporary literature, which he constantly bemoaned, he held to be due largely to the neglect of classical literature. "Without Latin," he wrote, "a man must be content to be counted amongst the vulgar." He regretted the disuse of the Latin language as a means of communication between scholars. Apart altogether from the educational value of the classics, he thought no other literature afforded the same refreshment and enjoyment for the mind. To take one of the classics in one's hand, even for half an hour, is to feel refreshed, purified, elevated, and strengthened, exactly as if one had drunk from a fresh rock spring.
In the afternoon, whatever the weather, Schopenhauer took his daily walk, together with his dog, his invariable companion. The two were well-known figures in Frankfurt, as they took their customary exercise together. Schopenhauer's devotion to his dog was boundless. For the animal world altogether he had a special tenderness, pitying animals as the tortured souls of the earth, and holding that in all essentials they are the same as man. He condemned vivisection, on the ground that animals have rights.
For two hours he took his customary walk, at a rapid pace, in accordance with his theory that quick movement is essential to health. Then he visited the reading-room of the town, never omitting to look through the Times. The evening was spent frequently at the theatre, or in the concert-room. In his later years, his growing deafness robbed him of much of the pleasure which he had always won from music. On returning home, he read for an hour, and then retired to rest. All his life he was afraid of robbers, and took extraordinary precautions against them. He slept invariably with loaded weapons by his bedside, and his valuables were hidden away with great ingenuity in various corners of his rooms. He believed that a thinker needed more than the ordinary amount of sleep to recuperate after the day's labours. His rule of life was modelled on that of Kant, but of Kant's early rising he strongly disapproved, believing it to be a reckless waste of vital energy.
Thus the latter part of his life is occupied with careful rules for the preservation of his health, which was naturally robust. The contradiction is at once obvious between his actual mode of life and his own moral ideal, as set forth in his works. Some of his most eloquent writing is on the subject of holiness, attained through renunciation and self-denial. Poverty, chastity, and constant mortification of the will are the ways along which man must travel to gain the highest moral solution of life. Schopenhauer was perfectly conscious of this contradiction between his ideals and his own way of life. But, he says, it is just as little needful that a saint should be a philosopher, as that a philosopher should be a saint. In the same way, it is not necessary that a perfectly beautiful man should be a great sculptor, or that a great sculptor should himself be a beautiful man. It is a strange demand, that a moralist should teach no other virtue than that which he himself possesses.
After 1818, when The World as Will and Idea appeared, he published nothing further until 1836. In that year, a small book called On the Will in Nature appeared. It was described on the title-page as "a discussion of the corroborations which the philosophy of the author has, since its first appearance, received at the hands of empirical science." During these eighteen years, in which no new work of his was published, he had been collecting from all that he read, or saw, or heard, everything that could in any way be brought to bear as evidence towards the proof of his main theories and principles. Especially had he been on the alert with regard to scientific investigation, believing that his own sceptical generation would be most strongly influenced by anything that science could bring forward as confirmation of his metaphysical principles. Physics, he thought, had arrived at the point where it touches metaphysics. He was now confident that the time for his philosophy was ripening. But in spite of this confidence, the book met with no more recognition than had his previous works.
In 1838 he competed successfully for a prize offered by the Scientific Society of Drontheim, in Norway, for the best essay on the question "whether free-will could be proved from the evidence of consciousness." The subject could not have been more happily chosen to suit him. His essay won the prize, and he was elected a member of the Society. He obtained permission from the Society to publish his essay in Germany.
Meanwhile he was competing for another prize, offered by the Royal Danish Academy of the Sciences, at Copenhagen, on the subject of the sources or the basis of morality. He was confident of success, and wrote to the Academy asking that the award might be speedily made public, as he proposed to publish his essay along with the one which had been successful in Norway. His confidence was premature, for when the Danish Academy made known its decision, it announced that Schopenhauer's essay was the only one sent in, but that it was unworthy of the prize on several grounds, one of which was, that several of the chief philosophers had been treated with contempt.
From this time his rage against the three philosophers, Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling, knows no bounds. He attributed his failure to win recognition to a conspiracy among them and their followers. His writings abound in violent invective against them. In several ways there are points of contact between the system of Schopenhauer and that of Hegel, but Schopenhauer refused to admit any kinship between them.
His two treatises were published together, as he had intended. They appeared in 1841 as The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics. These two problems are the freedom of the will and the basis of morality. The treatment is little more than an expansion of the theories set forth in his chief work. He finds the roots of morality in sympathy. The sense of brotherhood, which binds together individual and individual, and welds them into an organic whole, is the foundation on which all the moral sentiments are built. All goodness, love, virtue, and nobility of character spring from the same source, from sympathy, which is the same in its nature as pure love. Beyond the egoism, which is fostered by the world around us, there exists also the principle of altruism, impelling men to self-sacrifice, unselfishness, and devotion.
The second edition of The World as Will and Idea, which appeared in 1844, seemed at first as likely to fail of attaining recognition as the earlier one. But a change was now at hand. The reign of optimistic pantheism was approaching its end in Germany. The lofty idealism, which was the strength of the dominant school of thought, and which found political expression in the revolutionary movements of 1848, was now followed by a wave of reaction. The democratic movement, after obtaining some temporary triumphs, was checked completely for the time, and a wave of weariness and discouragement passed over the country. Schopenhauer looked on, while Frankfurt was torn violently asunder in the throes of its revolution. His sentiments were against the democratic party, and he seems to have feared, above all else, the possibility of losing his private means. In letters written at this time to his friends, Schopenhauer expresses his dislike and disapproval of the great national movement of 1848. He was a thorough-going individualist, and the movement, which stirred to the depths the finest natures of the time, found no response in Schopenhauer's heart. His room was used by Austrian soldiers, who shot from the windows upon the democrats below.
His political views are expressed again in his will, made in 1852, in which Schopenhauer left the greater part of his estate to be spent for the benefit of the soldiers who had been wounded at Berlin, in 1818, in defence of the royal party against the democratic revolutionaries. In his view, the State exists only to secure safety of persons and property. It is a strange error, he says, to attribute to the State any moral function. It is to be regarded merely as the night-watchman, who protects us from thieves and robbers.
The German Parliament, which sat at Frankfurt, had but a short-lived existence. In the reaction which followed, Schopenhauer's philosophy found an open door. Disciples attached themselves gradually to the philosopher, and by degrees his system gained ground at home and abroad.
The work which won for him more popularity than any other, was Parerga and Paralipomena (Chips and Scraps), published in 1851. The work had been declined by three publishers before a Berlin firm agreed to publish, without any payment to the author. The book consists of essays of a very heterogeneous kind, and of varying length. Most of the chief problems discussed in his larger works are treated again in the essays. Religion, education, archæology, Sanscrit, style, noise, ghosts, and immortality are a few of the subjects dealt with. Schopenhauer's reading was wide. His quotations range freely over oriental, classical, and modern literature.
The success which followed the publication of this book was reflected on the earlier works, and it was now possible to bring out further editions. Schopenhauer's delight at this tardy recognition was unbounded. Every scrap of applause was gathered and absorbed with eagerness. In his letters during this period, everyone who differs from him is denounced as a charlatan and a windbag. Everyone who says anything at all similar is attacked as a plagiarist. Every adversary is moved by the meanest motives. So virulent is his abuse, and so coarse his language, that words in his letters have sometimes to be changed for an initial. Nothing short of adulation, could satisfy his hungry vanity. Even when the universities at last acknowledged him, and offered a prize for the best exposition and criticism of his system, he was enraged at the award of the prize to a student who treated him as of more importance in a literary than in a philosophical capacity. Praise of any other philosophy than his own filled him with bitterness. His correspondence with Frauenstadt, Lindner, and Asher is full of such weakness. It may be doubted whether any great man ever left behind him letters of so trifling a nature, so steeped in vanity and so resentful of any breath of criticism.
He was active to the end of his life, though the first fine rapture of his passionate love for all that is best in art was dimmed inevitably with the passing years. There is a pathetic reference in a letter to this dulling of his power of vision. "In the time," he writes, "when my spirit was at its zenith, whatever object my eye rested upon made revelations to me. Now that I am old, it may happen that I stand in front of Raphael's Madonna, and she says nothing to me."
He died suddenly, in 1860, at the age of seventy-two. The stone which marks his grave bears as inscription the sole words "Arthur Schopenhauer."