Schopenhauer

by Margrieta Beer

This ethical teaching is no new thing. It is only the philosophical expression of it which is new. As Christianity developed, the seed of asceticism unfolded into full flower in the writings of the saints and mystics. Even more fully developed and more vividly expressed is this teaching in the ancient Indian writings. In the Indian sacred books, in their poems, myths, and legends, and in the lives of their saints, the love of one's neighbour is taught, and the complete surrender of self enjoined. Such love is not confined to humanity, but includes all living creatures. The path of asceticism is marked as the ideal way for all who strive after true holiness. There is wonderful harmony between the life of a Christian mystic and that of a Hindu saint. In each case the inward life and effort is the same. The rule of life enjoined on both shows striking resemblances. The renunciation of all possessions, the choice of deep, unbroken solitude, which is spent in silent contemplation, perfect chastity, and voluntary penance, is the teaching of Christian and Hindu alike. In such rare similarity of teaching, followed by races differing so radically in outward circumstances, Schopenhauer finds proof that this manifestation has its root in the nature of man, and appeals to an essential side of human, nature.

In his treatment of art, Schopenhauer points out how happiness is achieved in the contemplation of beauty. In his treatment of ethics he shows how permanent happiness may be attained. It is the man alone who follows the path of renunciation, and who succeeds in denying the will to live, who attains perfect happiness. He is filled with inward joy and peace. This joy is in no way akin to the passionate delight experienced by those who love life. That is a fleeting emotion, which has keen suffering as its correlative. But "it is a peace that cannot be shaken, a deep rest and inward serenity, a state which we cannot contemplate without the greatest longing, when it is brought before our imagination, because we at once recognise it as that which infinitely surpasses anything else. Then we feel that every gratification won from the world is merely like the alms which the beggar receives from life to-day, that he may hunger again on the morrow. Resignation, on the other hand, is like an inherited estate, it frees the owner for ever from all care." He who can enter into the spirit of the beautiful, as revealed in art, silences his will for the moment, but the saint who attains holiness is altogether blessed, for he silences his will, not only for the moment, but for ever. His will is wholly extinguished, save for the last glimmering spark, which retains his body in life, and which will be extinguished only with his death. Such a man has endured bitter struggles with his own nature, but has emerged triumphant. "Nothing can trouble him more, nothing can move him, for he has cut all the thousand cords of will which hold us bound to the world, and as desire, fear, envy, and anger drag us hither and thither in constant pain. He now looks back smiling and at rest on the delusions of the world, which once were able to agonise his spirit, but which now are as indifferent to him as the chessmen when the game is ended. Life passes before him as a fleeting illusion, as a light morning dream before half-waking eyes, the real world already shining through it."

It is interesting to compare Schopenhauer's ideal of the highest form of human life with that of Aristotle. For Aristotle too the highest end of man was the life of pure contemplation. This, however, was a more purely intellectual state than Schopenhauer had in mind, but still an existence withdrawn from the cares and struggles of life, wrapped securely in quiet contemplation.

It must not be supposed that when this self-surrender has been won, that it never wavers or hesitates. We can never rest upon it as an assured possession. It must ever be attained anew by a constant battle. For so long as the body lives, the whole will to live exists potentially, striving to realise itself and to burn again with its old intensity. The peace and blessedness which is attained in the lives of holy men is found only as the flower which blossoms after victory in the constant battle with the will to live. In the histories of the saints we find their inner lives full of conflicts and temptations, the end which gives the deepest peace and opens the door of freedom constantly eluding them.

The suffering which is experienced personally is that which most frequently produces the fullest resignation. The illusions of life are a constant hindrance to the fullest self-surrender. The will must first be broken by great personal suffering before complete self-conquest is reached. Then, having passed through increasing stages of affliction, and being brought finally to the verge of despair, a man knows himself and the world, and rises above himself and all suffering. He renounces willingly everything he desired formerly, and faces death joyfully. This is the refined gold, which is drawn out of the purifying flame of suffering. Goethe has given an incomparable picture of an unfolding of character to such ends, in his drawing of Gretchen in Faust.

The extent to which man is free to make himself good raises the perennial question of the freedom of the will. Schopenhauer held that the answer depends entirely on the statement of the problem. In so far as the real nature of man is will, and man himself is only a phenomenon of this will, a particular action follows inevitably on a given motive in a given character. It is just as absurd, he says, to doubt such inevitableness as to doubt that the three angles of any triangle are together equal to two right angles. If the character and the motives were given completely, it would be possible to calculate the future conduct of a man as exactly as we can calculate an eclipse of the sun or moon. Character is as consistent as nature. There is no independence of the law of causality, the necessity of which extends to man as to all else in nature. But in the metaphysical world, Schopenhauer, following Kant, maintains that the will is free. In so far as the will represents the only reality, it transcends experience. It is outside time, outside every form of the mind which limits or moulds our experience. It is above and beyond the forms of causality, and therefore free transcendentally. In that dim region where character is formed we are our own creators. Action which is seen empirically to follow inevitably from a character already formed is seen from another point of view to be but a form of self-realisation, of self-expression.

Mysticism is strong in Schopenhauer. Now and again it breaks through the even flow of European thought, usually, as with Schopenhauer, drawing its main inspiration from the East. There is a recurring period in the history of thought, when the scientific point of view does not make its accustomed appeal, when it is felt intensely that science can give but a partial and limited view. Academic culture and science are felt to be inadequate, are felt even to be leading away from the real heart of the matter, and putting us outside the deepest current of existence. Intuitive and direct knowledge is given then an importance denied to the knowledge of the reason. Man retires into himself, instead of searching outside himself for objective knowledge. He seeks the secret of the universe in the depths of his own heart and will, and strives to pluck out the heart of life's mystery in waiting on the silent twilight of inner feeling. The eyes are shut on the outer world, in order that one may see the more inwardly. Then only does man experience the sense of solidarity and kinship which runs through all things, and feel himself one with the universe.

These recurring waves of mysticism seem always to appear in the history of thought at the end of a specially brilliant intellectual period. It is as though the human mind, having striven to the top of its capacity on the lines of the intellect and the reason, impatient at its own limitations, and wearying of the discrepancy between its endeavours and its achievements, turns eagerly in the opposite direction, and directs its gaze inward. The great school of Neo-Platonists, for example, followed immediately the most brilliant age of Greek thought. And the same is true of the strong trend in the direction of mysticism, which is so marked towards the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries in Germany, a tendency which shows itself in Schopenhauer more strongly than in any other philosopher.

There is a strong appeal in this ideal of human life, which Schopenhauer depicts in words of glowing eloquence. Based on the pessimism which claims that all life is worthless, it aims at conquering life by withdrawing altogether from it. This is a negative solution of the problem of life. It is possible to oppose to this philosophy a robuster view, which would come to grips with the misery and evil of existence on another plane. William James points to the spiritual gain that comes of fighting ills. To wage war obstinately against the odds of life fills us with courage and resolution, and there is possibly a deeper satisfaction to be won from the determined facing of the battle of life than in the attitude of pessimism, which bids us draw back and take no part in the fray. There is a fine courage in the attitude of mind, which admits "the deliciousness of insanities and realities, strivings and deadnesses, hopes and fears, agonies and exultations," but which claims that we who are born for the conflict, the shifting struggle of the sunbeam in the gloom, must accept it all as a vital part of the whole. "When the healthy love of life is on one, and all its forms and its appetites seem so unutterably real; when the most brutal and the most spiritual things are lit by the same sun, and each is an integral part of the total richness, it seems a grudging and sickly way of meeting so robust a universe to shrink away from any of its facts and wish them not to be. Rather take the strictly dramatic point of view, and treat the whole thing as a great unending romance which the spirit of the universe, striving to realise its own content, is eternally thinking out and representing to itself."