Essays of Schopenhauer | Page 8

for damages, alleging
that he had kicked and beaten her. Schopenhauer defended his own
case, with the result that the action was dismissed. The woman
appealed, and Schopenhauer, who was contemplating going to
Switzerland, did not alter his plans, so that the appeal was heard during
his absence, the judgment reversed, and he was mulcted in a fine of
twenty thalers. But the unfortunate business did not end here.

Schopenhauer proceeded from Switzerland to Italy, and did not return
to Berlin until May 1825. Caroline Marquet renewed her complaints
before the courts, stating that his ill-usage had occasioned a fever
through which she had lost the power of one of her arms, that her whole
system was entirely shaken, and demanding a monthly allowance as
compensation. She won her case; the defendant had to pay three
hundred thalers in costs and contribute sixty thalers a year to her
maintenance while she lived. Schopenhauer on returning to Berlin did
what he could to get the judgment reversed, but unsuccessfully. The
woman lived for twenty years; he inscribed on her death certificate,
"Obit anus, obit onus"
The idea of marriage seems to have more or less possessed
Schopenhauer about this time, but he could not finally determine to
take the step. There is sufficient to show in the following essays in
what light he regarded women. Marriage was a debt, he said, contracted
in youth and paid off in old age. Married people have the whole burden
of life to bear, while the unmarried have only half, was a
characteristically selfish apothegm. Had not all the true philosophers
been celibates--Descartes, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Kant?
The classic writers were of course not to be considered, because with
them woman occupied a subordinate position. Had not all the great
poets married, and with disastrous consequences? Plainly,
Schopenhauer was not the person to sacrifice the individual to the will
of the species.
In August 1831 he made a fortuitous expedition to
Frankfort-on-the-Main--an expedition partly prompted by the outbreak
of cholera at Berlin at the time, and partly by the portent of a dream (he
was credulous in such matters) which at the beginning of the year had
intimated his death. Here, however, he practically remained until his
death, leading a quiet, mechanically regular life and devoting his
thoughts to the development of his philosophic ideas, isolated at first,
but as time went on enjoying somewhat greedily the success which had
been denied him in his earlier days. In February 1839 he had a moment
of elation when he heard from the Scientific Society of Drontheim that
he had won the prize for the best essay on the question, "Whether free

will could be proved from the evidence of consciousness," and that he
had been elected a member of the Society; and a corresponding
moment of despondency when he was informed by the Royal Danish
Academy of the Sciences at Copenhagen, in a similar competition, that
his essay on "Whether the source and foundation of ethics was to be
sought in an intuitive moral idea, and in the analysis of other derivative
moral conceptions, or in some other principle of knowledge," had failed,
partly on the ground of the want of respect which it showed to the
opinions of the chief philosophers. He published these essays in 1841
under the title of "The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics," and ten
years later Parerga und Paralipomena the composition of which had
engaged his attention for five or six years. The latter work, which
proved to be his most popular, was refused by three publishers, and
when eventually it was accepted by Hayn of Berlin, the author only
received ten free copies of his work as payment. It is from this book
that all except one of the following essays have been selected; the
exception is "The Metaphysics of Love," which appears in the
supplement of the third book of his principal work. The second edition
of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung appeared in 1844, and was
received with growing appreciation. Hitherto he had been chiefly
known in Frankfort as the son of the celebrated Johanna Schopenhauer;
now he came to have a following which, if at first small in numbers,
were sufficiently enthusiastic, and proved, indeed, so far as his
reputation was concerned, helpful. Artists painted his portrait; a bust of
him was made by Elizabeth Ney. In the April number of the
Westminster Review for 1853 John Oxenford, in an article entitled
"Iconoclasm in German Philosophy," heralded in England his
recognition as a writer and thinker; three years later Saint-Ren�
Taillandier, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, did a similar service for
him in France. One of his most enthusiastic admirers was Richard
Wagner, who in 1854 sent him a copy of his Der Ring der