INTRODUCTION
Schopenhauer differs from most other philosophers in that he has influenced not only the development of the history of thought, the course along which modern philosophy has proceeded, but in that his views have been welcomed as an inspiration, accepted almost in the spirit of a religious faith by workers in quite other departments of life.
No philosopher has so directly touched and influenced the great art movements of modern times. It is now nearly one hundred years since the publication of his greatest work, and his philosophy is a more potent and vitalising force to-day than in his own lifetime. It has been a source of inspiration to artists and has directly stimulated their creative activity, probably more than any other abstract system has ever done.
Poetry has always been influenced subtly by philosophy. Spenser and Shelley are imbued through and through with the doctrines of Plato. Goethe wrote some of his finest work under the spell of Spinoza, and some of Wordsworth's deepest experiences were interpreted to him through the ideas of Kant. It is to all artists, but especially to musicians, that Schopenhauer makes his most intimate appeal. For in his system music plays a strangely important part, above and apart from all the other arts. In analysing its spiritual character, he endows it with mystic significance. One famous instance of this influence is that of Wagner. His acquaintance with Schopenhauer's philosophy marked a turning-point in his artistic life. It gave a tremendous stimulus to his musical productivity, and while under its influence he composed his greatest works.
Schopenhauer's system expresses, according to his own statement, only a single thought, viewed in different aspects. He considers it from the metaphysical, æsthetic, and ethical points of view. This fundamental thought, which lies at the root of his entire philosophy, is concerned with the significance of the will. The will alone gives the key to the understanding of man's existence. Every force in nature is to be regarded as will, and the inner reality of the universe is to be found only in will.
While it is especially to those who are concerned with the problems arising out of the function and significance of art that Schopenhauer offers such fruitful and fascinating suggestions, the other aspects of his system offer solutions in the sphere of ethics and metaphysics of almost equally vital importance. His insistence on the significance of instinct and intuition in all the lower and higher forms of life is of great importance in the history of philosophy. It is an aspect of the subject which until later times had been strangely neglected. This prominence which is given to instinct and intuition, is connected directly with his philosophy of the will.
Schopenhauer, unlike most philosophers, has always been read and appreciated by the general reader and student of life, as distinguished from the specialised student of philosophy. His fundamental attitude towards philosophy explains this to a great extent. Notwithstanding his marked leaning towards mysticism, he brought philosophy down to earth, and into relation with, the actual facts of life. He exchanged abstractions for realities. Philosophy had always been far too much concerned, he maintained, with abstract conceptions, and the philosopher had tended too exclusively to be a mere man of books and learning. The true philosopher, on the contrary, should be a guide to fine living as well as to high thinking.
Philosophy should express the real life of things. But the deepest things in life are not known by way of the intellect, but are lived and felt. The profoundest truths of life we know intuitively and directly, with a deeper certainty than the understanding can give.
That Schopenhauer has a wider public than have most philosophers is due partly to his style. He writes in language so singularly clear and lucid, that it can be followed easily by the general reader, not specially trained in a technical philosophical vocabulary. Of all German philosophers he is the greatest from a literary point of view. "The true philosopher," he writes, "will always seek after light and clearness, and will endeavour to resemble a Swiss lake, which through its peacefulness is able to unite great depth with great clearness, the depth revealing itself precisely by the clearness, rather than a turbid, impetuous mountain torrent." Philosophers have not always given much heed to this counsel of perfection. Obscurity of expression is merely the cloak in which men seek to hide their poverty of thought and triteness of mind. "Everyone," says Schopenhauer, "who possesses a beautiful and rich mind will always express himself in the most natural, direct, and simple way, concerned to communicate his thoughts to others and thus relieve the loneliness that he must feel in such a world as this."
Schopenhauer is a temperamental pessimist. In words of glowing and passionate eloquence he sets out to prove that all life is essentially sorrow. From his earliest days he had been abnormally sensitive to the misery that lies beneath the surface of life. Pain is essential to life and cannot be evaded. If it can find entrance in no other form, then it comes in the sad, grey garments of tedium and ennui.
The purest joy in life is that which lifts us out of our daily existence, and transforms us into disinterested spectators of it. This "divine release from the common ways of men" can only be found through art. But even this release, which is accessible only to the few, increases the capacity for suffering.
The final and only permanent solution of life is to be found in the life of the saint. True morality passes through virtue, which is rooted in sympathy, into asceticism. Art gives a marvellous consolation in life, but renunciation and self-surrender offer a complete release from the terrors and evils of existence. The veil of Mâyâ—the web of illusion—is lifted from man's eyes. He now shudders at the pleasures which recognise the assertion of life, and attains to the state of voluntary renunciation, resignation, and true indifference. Buddhism, Schopenhauer maintained, comes nearest of all religions to expressing this truth. It is here that he shows how profoundly Indian philosophy and religion had influenced him.
Throughout his life Schopenhauer was aggressively hostile towards all contemporary philosophers. To some extent, no doubt, his own failure to obtain academic recognition embittered him. But partly his attitude may be explained by the complete difference of method between them. Schopenhauer cares nothing at all about method. To Hegel and his contemporaries method was all-important. The historical method was the pathway which was followed with most enthusiasm at the time. It is especially for the historical method that Schopenhauer has the frankest contempt. Hegel and others were attempting to interpret present reality through history, seeking to show that through the slow process of history, unfolding itself in time, are revealed the organic principles which underlie the whole of life. Schopenhauer attaches practically no value to history as a highroad for philosophical inquiry. This way, he says, lie merely the dry bones of archæology and antiquarianism. To examine things historically is to look along a horizontal line. To think philosophically is to look along a vertical line. The latter is the rational and the more profound point of view. "What history narrates is in fact only the long, heavy, and confused dream of humanity." It is our inmost consciousness which is the real concern of the philosopher. "The true philosophy of history," he says, "consists in the insight into the causes of all these endless changes and their confusion. We have always before us the same even, unchanging nature, which to-day acts in the same way as yesterday. Thus it ought to recognise the identical in all events, in ancient as in modern times, in the East as in the West, and in spite of all difference in special circumstances, of costume and of custom, to see everywhere the same humanity. If one has read Herodotus, then in a philosophical regard one has read enough history. For everything is already there that makes up the subsequent history of the world."
That which is significant in itself, not in its relations, is to be found far more profoundly and distinctly in poetry than in history. There is, therefore, far more real, inner truth in poetry than in history. Aristotle held the same view, maintaining that poetry reveals a higher truth than history, for it strives to express the universal. "Poetry," he says, "is a more philosophical, and a higher thing than history."
In Schopenhauer's view, the true philosopher is the genius. His penetrative imagination will see farther and deeper than the learning of the mere scholar. The genius is a clear mirror of the inner nature of the universe. To him knowledge is the sun which reveals the world. His work may be regarded as an inspiration, as an interpretation of the spirit of beauty in art. He has been endowed by nature with a special faculty of inner vision, and uses his power to open the eyes of ordinary men. It is the genius who knows the inner nature of things, just as in Plato true philosophers are defined as "the lovers of the vision of truth, who are able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, and whose eyes are ever directed towards fixed and immutable principles." It is the genius, says Schopenhauer, who interprets his vision to the rest of mankind. He enables us to see the world through his eyes.
There was a wide difference, too, between Schopenhauer and other contemporary philosophers, in their attitude towards religion. Schopenhauer's freedom from academic fetters enabled him to steer an independent way. The German university professor was almost always dominated by the need for reconciling his philosophical theories with a theological creed. At times to square accounts between the two involved considerable ingenuity, as in the case of Kant. To Schopenhauer, to whom orthodox religion had always been a mere form, such attempts savoured of hypocrisy. Hence he always speaks slightingly of "philosophy-professors," and throughout his writings he makes bitter attacks upon them. Hegel's work is described as three-fourths utter absurdity, and one quarter as paradox, and he himself alluded to as "that intellectual Caliban." Plato's contempt for the sophists stands on very much the same plane of thought.
In spite of this attitude there is much in Schopenhauer's system, which is closely akin to Christianity on its mystical side. In his ethical theory he shows extraordinary points of agreement with the mediæval mystics. Materialism was utterly alien to his spirit. Materialists, he said, possess neither humanities nor culture, and their point of view filled him with the Olympian laughter of the gods. He always maintained that his theory of pessimism was more truly Christian, and more closely in accord with the spirit of primitive Christianity than the shallow optimism which crept into the later developments of that system. Its ascetic spirit he considered the kernel of Christianity. Protestantism represented for him a falling away from the earlier and purer form, and a transition to shallow rationalism.
His thought was much influenced by ancient Indian philosophy, and especially by Buddhism. The Upanishads had been published in Germany in 1801 in a Latin translation from a Persian version of the Sanscrit original. In these treatises are set forth the general system of mystical pantheism, which grew out of the more theosophic elements of the Vedas. In reading them Schopenhauer immediately acknowledged a kindred spirit. In speaking of this work he says, "How does everyone who by diligent reading has familiarised himself with this incomparable book, feel himself stirred to the innermost by that spirit. The mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted superstition, and all philosophy servile to that superstition. It is the most profitable and the most elevating reading which is possible in the world. It has been the consolation of my life, and will be the consolation of my death."