Essays of Schopenhauer | Page 2

delicate evasions, of small hypocrisies, of matters of tinsel sentiment;
social intercourse would be impossible, if it were not so. There is no

sort of social existence possible for a person who is ingenuous enough
to say always what he thinks, and, on the whole, one may be thankful
that there is not. One naturally enough objects to form the subject of a
critical diagnosis and exposure; one chooses for one's friends the
agreeable hypocrites of life who sustain for one the illusions in which
one wishes to live. The mere conception of a plain-speaking world is
calculated to reduce one to the last degree of despair; it is the
conception of the intolerable. Nevertheless it is good for mankind now
and again to have a plain speaker, a "mar feast," on the scene; a wizard
who devises for us a spectacle of disillusionment, and lets us for a
moment see things as he honestly conceives them to be, and not as we
would have them to be. But in estimating the value of a lesson of this
sort, we must not be carried too far, not be altogether convinced. We
may first take into account the temperament of the teacher; we may ask,
is his vision perfect? We may indulge in a trifling diagnosis on our own
account. And in an examination of this sort we find that Schopenhauer
stands the test pretty well, if not with complete success. It strikes us
that he suffers perhaps a little from a hereditary taint, for we know that
there is an unmistakable predisposition to hypochondria in his family;
we know, for instance, that his paternal grandmother became
practically insane towards the end of her life, that two of her children
suffered from some sort of mental incapacity, and that a third,
Schopenhauer's father, was a man of curious temper and that he
probably ended his own life. He himself would also have attached some
importance, in a consideration of this sort, to the fact, as he might have
put it, that his mother, when she married, acted in the interests of the
individual instead of unconsciously fulfilling the will of the species,
and that the offspring of the union suffered in consequence. Still, taking
all these things into account, and attaching to them what importance
they may be worth, one is amazed at the clearness of his vision, by his
vigorous and at moments subtle perception. If he did not see life whole,
what he did see he saw with his own eyes, and then told us all about it
with unmistakable veracity, and for the most part simply, brilliantly.
Too much importance cannot be attached to this quality of seeing
things for oneself; it is the stamp of a great and original mind; it is the
principal quality of what one calls genius.

In possessing Schopenhauer the world possesses a personality the
richer; a somewhat garrulous personality it may be; a curiously
whimsical and sensitive personality, full of quite ordinary superstitions,
of extravagant vanities, selfish, at times violent, rarely generous; a man
whom during his lifetime nobody quite knew, an isolated creature,
self-absorbed, solely concerned in his elaboration of the explanation of
the world, and possessing subtleties which for the most part escaped the
perception of his fellows; at once a hermit and a boulevardier. His was
essentially a great temperament; his whole life was a life of ideas, an
intellectual life. And his work, the fruit of his life, would seem to be
standing the test of all great work--the test of time. It is not a little
curious that one so little realised in his own day, one so little lovable
and so little loved, should now speak to us from his pages with
something of the force of personal utterance, as if he were actually with
us and as if we knew him, even as we know Charles Lamb and Izaak
Walton, personalities of such a different calibre. And this man whom
we realise does not impress us unfavourably; if he is without charm, he
is surely immensely interesting and attractive; he is so strong in his
intellectual convictions, he is so free from intellectual affectations, he is
such an ingenuous egotist, so na�vely human; he is so mercilessly
honest and independent, and, at times (one may be permitted to think),
so mistaken.
R.D.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
Arthur Schopenhauer was born at No. 117 of the Heiligengeist Strasse,
at Dantzic, on February 22, 1788. His parents on both sides traced their
descent from Dutch ancestry, the great-grandfather of his mother
having occupied some ecclesiastical position at Gorcum. Dr. Gwinner
in his Life does not follow the Dutch ancestry on the father's side, but
merely states that the great-grandfather of Schopenhauer at the
beginning of the eighteenth century rented a