The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer | Page 7

book; so that a book can be
important, whoever it was that wrote it.
But in regard to the form, the peculiar character of a book depends
upon the person who wrote it. It may treat of matters which are
accessible to everyone and well known; but it is the way in which they
are treated, what it is that is thought about them, that gives the book its
value; and this comes from its author. If, then, from this point of view a
book is excellent and beyond comparison, so is its author. It follows
that if a writer is worth reading, his merit rises just in proportion as he
owes little to his matter; therefore, the better known and the more
hackneyed this is, the greater he will be. The three great tragedians of
Greece, for example, all worked at the same subject-matter.
So when a book is celebrated, care should be taken to note whether it is
so on account of its matter or its form; and a distinction should be made
accordingly.
Books of great importance on account of their matter may proceed from
very ordinary and shallow people, by the fact that they alone have had

access to this matter; books, for instance, which describe journeys in
distant lands, rare natural phenomena, or experiments; or historical
occurrences of which the writers were witnesses, or in connection with
which they have spent much time and trouble in the research and
special study of original documents.
On the other hand, where the matter is accessible to everyone or very
well known, everything will depend upon the form; and what it is that
is thought about the matter will give the book all the value it possesses.
Here only a really distinguished man will be able to produce anything
worth reading; for the others will think nothing but what anyone else
can think. They will just produce an impress of their own minds; but
this is a print of which everyone possesses the original.
However, the public is very much more concerned to have matter than
form; and for this very reason it is deficient in any high degree of
culture. The public shows its preference in this respect in the most
laughable way when it comes to deal with poetry; for there it devotes
much trouble to the task of tracking out the actual events or personal
circumstances in the life of the poet which served as the occasion of his
various works; nay, these events and circumstances come in the end to
be of greater importance than the works themselves; and rather than
read Goethe himself, people prefer to read what has been written about
him, and to study the legend of Faust more industriously than the
drama of that name. And when Bürger declared that "people would
write learned disquisitions on the question, Who Leonora really was,"
we find this literally fulfilled in Goethe's case; for we now possess a
great many learned disquisitions on Faust and the legend attaching to
him. Study of this kind is, and remains, devoted to the material of the
drama alone. To give such preference to the matter over the form, is as
though a man were to take a fine Etruscan vase, not to admire its shape
or coloring, but to make a chemical analysis of the clay and paint of
which it is composed.
The attempt to produce an effect by means of the material
employed--an attempt which panders to this evil tendency of the
public--is most to be condemned in branches of literature where any
merit there may be lies expressly in the form; I mean, in poetical work.
For all that, it is not rare to find bad dramatists trying to fill the house
by means of the matter about which they write. For example, authors of

this kind do not shrink from putting on the stage any man who is in any
way celebrated, no matter whether his life may have been entirely
devoid of dramatic incident; and sometimes, even, they do not wait
until the persons immediately connected with him are dead.
The distinction between matter and form to which I am here alluding
also holds good of conversation. The chief qualities which enable a
man to converse well are intelligence, discernment, wit and vivacity:
these supply the form of conversation. But it is not long before
attention has to be paid to the matter of which he speaks; in other words,
the subjects about which it is possible to converse with him--his
knowledge. If this is very small, his conversation will not be worth
anything, unless he possesses the above-named formal qualities in a
very exceptional degree; for he will have nothing to talk about but
those facts of life and nature which everybody