Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

456
SCHOPENHAUER
stress on the theory who is most conscious of defects in
the practice. It need not therefore surprise us that the
man who formulated the sum of virtue in justice and bene¬
volence was unable to be just to his own kinsfolk and
reserved his compassion largely for the brutes, and that
the delineator of asceticism was more than moderately
sensible of the comforts and enjoyments of life.
Habits of Having renounced what he would call the superstitions
life. 0f duty to country, to kindred, and to associates, except
in so far as these duties were founded on contract (and
that, according to him, all duties imply), it was natural
that he should take steps to minimize that friction which
he so easily excited, and which had induced his voluntary
exile from the arena. His regular habits of life and care¬
ful regard to his own health remind us of the conduct of
the bachelor Kant. He would rise between seven and eight
both summer and winter, sponge himself, bathing his eyes
carefully, sit down to coffee prepared by his own hands,
and soon get to work. He was a slow reader. The classics
were old friends, always revisited with pleasure. He only
read original works—the classics of pure literature—avoid¬
ing all books about books, and especially eschewed the more
modern philosophers. Hume in English and Helvetius and
Chamfort in French he found to his mind in their sceptical
estimates of ordinary virtue. Mystical and ascetic writ¬
ings, from Buddhism and the Upanishads to Eckhart and
the Deutsche Theologie, commended themselves by their in¬
sistence on the reality of the higher life. Their example
of will-force drew his favourable notice to the phenomena
of mesmerism, just as his sympathy with the lower brethren
of man made him an interested observer of a young orang¬
outang shown at Frankfort in 1834. He was familiar with
several literatures, English certainly not the least. The
names of Shakespeare, Scott, Byron, Calderon, Petrarch,
Dante, are frequent in his pages. What he read he tried
to read in the original,—or anywhere but in a German trans¬
lation. Even the Old Testament he found more impress¬
ive in the Septuagint version than in Luther’s rendering.
The hour of noon brought cessation from his contempla¬
tions, and for half an hour he solaced himself on the flute.
At one o’clock he sat down to dinner in his inn, and after
dinner came home for an hour’s siesta. After some light
reading he went out for a stroll, alone, if possible country-
wards, with cane in hand, cigar lit, and poodle following.
Occasionally he would stop abruptly, turn round or look
back, mutter something to himself, so as to leave on the
passer-by the impression that he was either crack-brained
or angry. Like Kant, he kept his lips closed on principle.
His walk over, he retired to the reading-room and studied
the Times,—for he had been always somewhat of an Anglo¬
maniac, and had learnt this habit of English life from his
father. In winter he would sometimes attend the opera.
Between eight and nine he took supper, with a half-bottle
of light wine (he avoided his country’s beer), at a table by
himself.
With his low estimate of the average human being, his
sympathies were aristocratic. He left the bulk of his
fortune to an institution at Berlin for the benefit of those
who had suffered on the side of order during the revolu¬
tionary struggles of 1848-49. But in so doing it was not
his sympathy with kings but his recognition of the merits
of public security which gave the motive to his actions.
TV ith all his eulogy of voluntary poverty, he did not agree
to being deprived of his property by the malice or cupidity
of others, and fears of the loss of his means haunted
him not less keenly than other imaginary terrors,—the
fancied evils distracting him no less perhaps than would
have done those domestic and civil obligations from which
he endeavoured to hold himself free. The Hemesis of his
social Idchete fell upon him; and, like all solitaries, he
gave an exaggerated importance to trifles, which the sweep
of business and customary duty clear away from the
ordinary man’s memory.
It was not till he was fifty years of age that he set up Personal
rooms and furniture of his own. These abodes he changed details,
at Frankfort about four times, living latterly on the
street which runs along the Main. On the mat in his
chamber lay his poodle,—latterly a brown dog, which had
succeeded the original white one, named Atma (the World-
Soul), of which he had been especially fond. These dogs
had more than once brought him into trouble with his
landlord. In a corner of the room was placed a gilt
statuette of Buddha, and on a table not far off lay
Duperron’s Latin translation of the Upanishads, which
served as the prayer-book from which Schopenhauer read
his devotions. On the desk stood a bust of Kant, and a
few portraits hung on the walls. The philosopher’s person
was under middle size, strongly built and broad-chested,
with small hands. His voice was loud and clear; his
eyes blue and somewhat wide apart; the mouth full and
sensuous, latterly becoming broad as his teeth gave way.
The high brow and heavy under-jaw were the evidence of
his contrasted nature of ample intellect and vigorous im¬
pulses. In youth he had light curly hair, whereas his
beard in manhood was of a slightly reddish tint. He
always dressed carefully as a gentleman, in black dress-
coat and white necktie, and wore shoes. In his later years
his portrait was taken more than once, and by several
artists, and his bust was modelled somewhat to his own
mind in 1859. Reproductions of these likenesses have
made familiar his characteristic but unamiable features.
In 1854 Richard Wagner sent him a copy of the Ring
of the Nibelung, with some words of thanks for a theory
of music which had fallen in with his own conceptions.
Three years later he received a visit from his old college
friend Bunsen, who was then staying in Heidelberg. On
his seventieth birthday congratulations flowed in from
many quarters. In April 1860 he began to be affected
by occasional difficulty in breathing and by palpitation
of the heart. Another attack came on in autumn (9th
September), and again a week later. On the evening of
the 18th his friend and subsequent biographer, Dr
Gwinner, sat with him and conversed. On the morning
of the 21st September he rose and sat down alone to
breakfast; shortly afterwards his doctor called and found
him dead in his chair. By his will, made in 1852, with a
codicil dated February 1859, his property, with the ex¬
ception of some small bequests, was devised to the above-
mentioned institution at Berlin. Gwinner was named
executor, and Frauenstadt was entrusted with the care of
his manuscripts and other literary remains.
The philosophy of Schopenhauer, like almost every system of the Philo-
19th century, can hardly be understood without reference to the sophy
ideas of Kant. Anterior to Kant the gradual advance of idealism from
had been the most conspicuous feature in philosophic speculation. Kant to
That the direct objects of knowledge, the realities of experience, Schopen.
were after all only our ideas or perceptions was the lesson of every hauer.
thinker from Descartes to Hume. And this doctrine was generally
understood to mean that human thought, limited as it was by its
own weakness and acquired habits, could hardly hope to cope suc¬
cessfully with the problem of apprehending the real things. The
idealist position Kant seemed at first sight to retain with an even
stronger force than ever. But it is darkest just before the dawn ;
and Kant, the Copernicus of philosophy, had really altered the
aspects of the doctrine of ideas. It was his purpose to show that
the forms of thought (which he sought to isolate from the peculi¬
arities incident to the organic body) were not merely customary
means for licking into convenient shape the data of perception, but
entered as underlying elements into the constitution of objects,
making experience possible and determining the fundamental struc¬
ture of nature. In other words, the forms of knowledge were the
main factor in making objects. By Kant, however, these forms
are generally treated psychologically as the action of the several
faculties of a mind. Behind thinking there is the thinker. But