Is it not somewhat surprising that a man like this, who, to do him justice, made no pretence of practising what he taught, but said openly, with cynical effrontery, “I preach sanctity, but I am no saint,”[19] should have exercised any influence over his generation? We read, however, that “his little band of disciples grew, and their fanaticism reached a ludicrous point. One entreated him to found a trust for the purpose of keeping watch that no syllable of his works should ever be altered; another had his portrait painted and placed in a room like a chapel,”[20] etc.
This particular hero-worship is, to my thinking, so portentous that I have been tempted thus to study it at some length. For thousands of years, the human race has gone on adding one noble type to another in its Pantheon,—the old heathen patriotism and heroism of a Theseus, a Codrus, a Curtius, a Regulus, the modest wisdom of a Socrates, and the stoic grandeur of a Marcus Aurelius. Christianity added yet saintlier virtues to the ideal,—the charity, the purity, the religious fervor, and martyr devotion of a whole army of saints. Yet all these “stars of our mortal night” can, it seems, be obscured and forgotten; and men who might have known and honored and followed them, like the Magi of old, prefer to dance after such a flaring link-light as Schopenhauer lifted over his own head! Observing this, and how his desolate doctrine is gaining ground, and recognizing not a few of his personal characteristics (more especially his arrogance) among other thinkers nearer home, we are tempted to turn back fondly and regretfully to the humblest old-fashioned goodness. Many of us had confidently trusted that, when knowledge increased, wisdom and love would grow along with it; that, without losing the sacred lessons of the past, mankind would obtain still deeper insight into moral truth, and that phases of character would appear more beautiful, more joyous, more perfectly rounded in all the gifts and graces of humanity than the world yet has seen,—the long-severed virtues of the hero and the saint combined at last.
Alas! if Schopenhauers are to increase and multiply among us, these hopes have been visionary, indeed! As his character emerges from his biography, and stands clearly revealed to sight, memories of many a man and woman of small account in the world rise up and range themselves in our thoughts for comparison opposite to this great philosopher. We remember those who, instead of flying from the terrors of pestilence or war, have freely gone to meet them at the call of benevolence or patriotism. We remember those who, instead of finding their fellow-men “despicable,” have been lifelong loving friends, faithful and tender husbands, devoted parents and children, ardent philanthropists, sacrificing wealth and health and every enjoyment that they might relieve and bless the most miserable of mankind,—the criminal, the diseased, the vicious, and abandoned. We remember those who, instead of resting self-satisfied with the “unalterableness” of their own moral defects, have striven day and night, like the Pilgrim fighting on his knees against Apollyon, to purify their hearts of every stain, and, instead of arraigning Providence because their merits were insufficiently rewarded, have blessed God most of all for their afflictions. We remember all these, and also we remember the glory of peace and patience on their pain-worn faces; and from the depths of our souls comes the verdict that the dullest “Philistine” of them all was, in the scale of true nobleness, worth a thousand pessimist philosophers.
Schopenhauer was, in truth, the best illustration which could be found of the fallacy of the modern intellect-worship, the idolatry of mere mental force, which is scarcely less stupid and ignoble than the idolatry of the physical force of winds or waters. As baseness is more contemptible in a king, and miserliness in a millionnaire, so are all moral faults and littlenesses only more despicable when set on the pedestal of genius. There are minds—and Schopenhauer’s was one of them—whose brilliancy is that of a light-house. Its best use is to disclose the cold and troubled sea, and the dreary rocks whereon the unwary might make shipwreck.
The question, “How far is Pessimism true, and how far does the actual state of the world justify us in pronouncing life to be an evil?” is far too vast and too solemn to be treated in this brief paper. One remark only must be made in abatement of the wide-sweeping denunciations of the present order of things in which Pessimists habitually indulge. If we take count of their arguments, we shall find that at least one-third are built on the assumption (which nothing in genuine philosophy warrants) that the “hypothesis of a God” involves the attribution to him not only of supreme but of absolute power, and generally of a power which includes self-contradictions. We should sweep away no inconsiderable number of difficulties, if we could get fairly out of reach of this ever-recurring fallacy, and hear no more that God ought to make every creature absolutely happy, and also absolutely virtuous; and illume the martyr’s glory, while invariably extinguishing the martyr’s pile. And, again, another third of the arguments of Pessimists rests on the yet more egregious and fundamental mistake that suffering is always to be accounted an evil, and may be lawfully weighed by them as such in holding the scales of the world. The truth that it is “good to have been afflicted,” that out of pain and grief and disappointment arise the purest virtues, the tenderest sympathies, the loftiest courage, the divinest faith,—this thrice-blessed truth, the very alphabet of spiritual experience, is, as a rule, quite overlooked by great philosophers of the order of Schopenhauer.
When all corrections and deductions are made, a residue of profound, awful, inexplicable misery—misery of sinful man and misery of sinless brutes—remains, alas! to form, doubtless, in time to come, as in the ages which are past, the dread “Riddle of the painful Earth.” We must expect it to press upon us ever more and more in proportion as our sense of justice and love rises higher, and our sympathies with unmerited suffering grow more acute. Whether the shadow which that mystery casts on religion will hereafter be in any degree relieved by fresh lights obtained through sounder theories of Nature, it were idle to guess. One thing seems clear enough; namely, that the spirit wherewith some modern Pessimists approach the tremendous problem is one which can never lead to its solution, and which in itself is calculated to form no inconsiderable addition to the gloom of human existence. The world, to all who enter it, is very much what their anticipations make of it,—full of matter for joy and gratitude, or for repining and discontent. It appears beautiful or dreary, according as they regard it through the cloudless, childlike eyes of cheerful trust or through the dim and distorting spectacles of doubt and despair. No generation so miserable has yet seen the light as one which should be trained to expect neither justice nor love from God, and to “cultivate a connected view of the general despicability of mankind.”
After all, as Schopenhauer himself confessed (though he cared so little to practise the lesson), character—or, as Mr. Matthew Arnold would say, conduct—is the great matter to which all theories are subordinate. “Moral goodness belongs to an order of things which is above this life, and is incommensurable with any other perfection.” There is a certain value in the old test whereby a tree is known by its fruits. To such of us as have kept any foundations of faith still standing, the presumption is surely enormous that the intellectual system which naturally produces courage, trustfulness, and loving-kindness, must be nearer to the Eternal Verities than the blighting theory which brings forth such thorns and thistles as deformed the character of the great Pessimist Philosopher of the nineteenth century.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Life, p. 80.