The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer | Page 3

outward form; or else the particular kind of
mental activity in question, and the methods it follows. And we do, in
fact, use it in this latter sense, when we say of a writer that he pursues
literature as a calling. If, then, literature can be taken to mean a process
as well as a result of mental activity, there can be no error in speaking
of it as Art. I use that term in its broad sense, as meaning skill in the
display of thought; or, more fully, a right use of the rules of applying to
the practical exhibition of thought, with whatever material it may deal.
In connection with literature, this is a sense and an application of the
term which have been sufficiently established by the example of the
great writers of antiquity.
It may be asked, of course, whether the true thinker, who will always
form the soul of the true author, will not be so much occupied with
what he has to say, that it will appear to him a trivial thing to spend
great effort on embellishing the form in which he delivers it. Literature,
to be worthy of the name, must, it is true, deal with noble matter--the
riddle of our existence, the great facts of life, the changing passions of
the human heart, the discernment of some deep moral truth. It is easy to
lay too much stress upon the mere garment of thought; to be too precise;
to give to the arrangement of words an attention that should rather be
paid to the promotion of fresh ideas. A writer who makes this mistake
is like a fop who spends his little mind in adorning his person. In short,

it may be charged against the view of literature which is taken in
calling it an Art, that, instead of making truth and insight the author's
aim, it favors sciolism and a fantastic and affected style. There is, no
doubt, some justice in the objection; nor have we in our own day, and
especially amongst younger men, any lack of writers who endeavor to
win confidence, not by adding to the stock of ideas in the world, but by
despising the use of plain language. Their faults are not new in the
history of literature; and it is a pleasing sign of Schopenhauer's insight
that a merciless exposure of them, as they existed half a century ago, is
still quite applicable to their modern form.
And since these writers, who may, in the slang of the hour, be called
"impressionists" in literature, follow their own bad taste in the
manufacture of dainty phrases, devoid of all nerve, and generally with
some quite commonplace meaning, it is all the more necessary to
discriminate carefully between artifice and art.
But although they may learn something from Schopenhauer's advice, it
is not chiefly to them that it is offered. It is to that great mass of writers,
whose business is to fill the columns of the newspapers and the pages
of the review, and to produce the ton of novels that appear every year.
Now that almost everyone who can hold a pen aspires to be called an
author, it is well to emphasize the fact that literature is an art in some
respects more important than any other. The problem of this art is the
discovery of those qualities of style and treatment which entitled any
work to be called good literature.
It will be safe to warn the reader at the very outset that, if he wishes to
avoid being led astray, he should in his search for these qualities turn to
books that have stood the test of time.
For such an amount of hasty writing is done in these days that it is
really difficult for anyone who reads much of it to avoid contracting its
faults, and thus gradually coming to terms of dangerous familiarity
with bad methods. This advice will be especially needful if things that
have little or no claim to be called literature at all--the newspapers, the
monthly magazine, and the last new tale of intrigue or adventure--fill a
large measure, if not the whole, of the time given to reading. Nor are
those who are sincerely anxious to have the best thought in the best
language quite free from danger if they give too much attention to the
contemporary authors, even though these seem to think and write

excellently. For one generation alone is incompetent to decide upon the
merits of any author whatever; and as literature, like all art, is a thing of
human invention, so it can be pronounced good only if it obtains lasting
admiration, by establishing a permanent appeal to mankind's deepest
feeling for truth and beauty.
It is in this sense that Schopenhauer