Essays of Schopenhauer

EBook of Essays of
Schopenhauer, by Arthur
Schopenhauer

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Arthur Schopenhauer This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at
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Title: Essays of Schopenhauer
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
Release Date: April 7, 2004 [EBook #11945]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
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OF SCHOPENHAUER ***

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ESSAYS OF SCHOPENHAUER:
TRANSLATED BY MRS. RUDOLF DIRCKS.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION.

CONTENTS
ON AUTHORSHIP AND STYLE ON NOISE ON EDUCATION ON
READING AND BOOKS THE EMPTINESS OF EXISTENCE ON
WOMEN THINKING FOR ONESELF SHORT DIALOGUE ON THE
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR TRUE BEING BY DEATH
RELIGION--A DIALOGUE PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS
METAPHYSICS OF LOVE PHYSIOGNOMY ON SUICIDE

PRELIMINARY.
When Schopenhauer was asked where he wished to be buried, he
answered, "Anywhere; they will find me;" and the stone that marks his
grave at Frankfort bears merely the inscription "Arthur Schopenhauer,"
without even the date of his birth or death. Schopenhauer, the pessimist,
had a sufficiently optimistic conviction that his message to the world
would ultimately be listened to--a conviction that never failed him
during a lifetime of disappointments, of neglect in quarters where
perhaps he would have most cherished appreciation; a conviction that
only showed some signs of being justified a few years before his death.
Schopenhauer was no opportunist; he was not even conciliatory; he
never hesitated to declare his own faith in himself, in his principles, in
his philosophy; he did not ask to be listened to as a matter of courtesy
but as a right--a right for which he would struggle, for which he fought,
and which has in the course of time, it may be admitted, been conceded
to him.
Although everything that Schopenhauer wrote was written more or less
as evidence to support his main philosophical thesis, his unifying
philosophical principle, the essays in this volume have an interest, if
not altogether apart, at least of a sufficiently independent interest to
enable them to be considered on their own merits, without relation to
his main idea. And in dissociating them, if one may do so for a moment

(their author would have scarcely permitted it!), one feels that one
enters a field of criticism in which opinions can scarcely vary. So far as
his philosophy is concerned, this unanimity does not exist; he is one of
the best abused amongst philosophers; he has many times been
explained and condemned exhaustively, and no doubt this will be as
many times repeated. What the trend of his underlying philosophical
principal was, his metaphysical explanation of the world, is indicated in
almost all the following essays, but chiefly in the "Metaphysics of
Love," to which the reader may be referred.
These essays are a valuable criticism of life by a man who had a wide
experience of life, a man of the world, who possessed an almost
inspired faculty of observation. Schopenhauer, of all men,
unmistakably observed life at first hand. There is no academic echo in
his utterances; he is not one of a school; his voice has no formal
intonation; it is deep, full-chested, and rings out its words with all the
poignancy of individual emphasis, without bluster, but with unfailing
conviction. He was for his time, and for his country, an adept at literary
form; but he used it only as a means. Complicated as his sentences
occasionally are, he says many sharp, many brilliant, many
epigrammatic things, he has the manner of the famous essayists, he is
paradoxical (how many of his paradoxes are now truisms!); one fancies
at times that one is almost listening to a creation of Moli�re, but
these fireworks are not merely a literary display, they are used to
illumine what he considers to be the truth. Rien n'est beau que le vrai;
le vrai seul est aimable, he quotes; he was a deliberate and diligent
searcher after truth, always striving to attain the heart of things, to
arrive at a knowledge of first principles. It is, too, not without a sort of
grim humour that this psychological vivisectionist attempts to lay bare
the skeleton of the human mind, to tear away all the charming little
sentiments and hypocrisies which in the course of time become a part
and parcel of human life. A man influenced by such motives, and
possessing a frank and caustic tongue, was not likely to attain any very
large share of popular favour or to be esteemed a companionable sort of
person. The fabric of social life is interwoven with a multitude of