The most complete type of madness in genius is presented to us by Schopenhauer.[181] He himself considered that he inherited his intelligence from his mother, a literary woman full of vivacity, but heartless; while his character came from his father, a banker, who was misanthropic and eccentric to monomania. From childhood his hearing was defective, and he believed—and it is probably true—that he inherited his deafness, his very large head, and his brilliant eyes, from his father. He lived for some time in England under the care of a clergyman. He learnt to know the English language and literature, and also learnt to despise the bigotry of his hosts. Notwithstanding constant change of scene involved in his travels, he was never cheerful, and gave free course to his discontent with himself and his surroundings. “From my youth,” he says, “I have always been melancholy. Once, when I was perhaps eighteen, I
SCHOPENHAUER.
thought to myself, in spite of my youth, that the world could not be the work of a God, but rather of a devil. During my education I certainly had to suffer too much from my father’s temperament.” He was frightened by imaginary diseases. In Switzerland the Alps aroused in him sadness rather than admiration. His mother, like all those who came in contact with him, experienced the unhappy effects of his character, for when, in 1807, he wished, at the age of nineteen, to come and see her at Weimar, she wrote to him, “I have always told you that it would be very difficult for me to live with you; the more nearly I observe you, the more this difficulty increases, so far at least as I am concerned. I do not hide from you that, so long as you remain what you are now, I would support any sacrifice rather than submit to it. I do not misunderstand the foundation of goodness in you; what separates me from you is not your heart, not your inner, but your outer, self, your views, your judgments, your manner of behaving; in short, I cannot harmonize with you in anything that concerns your external self. Even your ill-humour, your lamentations over the inevitable, your sombre face, your extravagant opinions, which you give forth like oracles, and tolerate no opposition to, oppress me, shock my serenity, and are no use to yourself. Your disagreeable discussions, your lamentations over the stupidity of the world and human misery, give me wretched nights and bad dreams.”[182]
He became more and more estranged from his mother, alleging that she had not respected his father’s memory, that she had dissipated the common fortune by her extravagance, and had thus reduced him to the necessity of working for his living. This effort was entirely repugnant to his nature. In this he yielded to a feeling of anguish, which, by his own confession, bordered on madness. “If there is nothing to cause me misery, I am tormented by the thought that there must be something hidden from me. Misera conditio nostra.”[183]
In 1814 Schopenhauer left Weimar to complete his great work. He was convinced that he could and must open a new and only way to lead men of mind and heart to truth; he felt in himself something more than mere science, something demoniacal (dämonisches).
In 1813 he had already said: “Beneath my hand, and still more in my head, a work, a philosophy, is ripening, which will be at once an ethic and a metaphysic, hitherto so unreasonably separated, just as man has been divided into body and soul. The work grows, and gradually becomes concrete, like the fœtus in its mother’s womb. I do not know what will appear at last. I recognize a member, an organ, one part after another. I write without seeking for results, for I know that it all stands on the same foundation, and will thus compose a vital and organic whole. I do not understand the system of the work, just as a mother does not understand the fœtus that develops in her bowels, but she feels it tremble within her. My mind draws its food from the world by the medium of intelligence and thought; this nourishment gives body to my work; and yet I do not know why it should happen in me and not in others who receive the same food. O Chance! sovereign of this world, let me live in peace for a few years yet, for I love my work as a mother loves her child. When it is ripe and brought to the light, then exercise your rights, and claim interest for the delay. But if, in this iron century, I succumb before that hour, may these unripened principles and studies be received by the world as they are, until perhaps some related mind appears who will collect and unite the members.”