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.