Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/478

Rh 456 SCHOPENHAUER stress on the theory who is most conscious of defects in the practice. It need not therefore surprise us that the man who formulated the sum of virtue in justice and bene- volence was unable to be just to his own kinsfolk and reserved his compassion largely for the brutes, and that the delineator of asceticism was more than moderately sensible of the comforts and enjoyments of life. Habits of Having renounced what he would call the superstitions life. of duty to country, to kindred, and to associates, except in so far as these duties were founded on contract (and that, according to him, all duties imply), it was natural that he should take steps to minimize that friction which he so easily excited, and which had induced his voluntary exile from the arena. His regular habits of life and care- ful regard to his own health remind us of the conduct of the bachelor Kant. He would rise between seven and eight both summer and winter, sponge himself, bathing his eyes carefully, sit down to coffee prepared by his own hands, and soon get to work. He was a slow reader. The classics were old friends, always revisited with pleasure. He only read original works the classics of pure literature avoid- ing all books about books, and especially eschewed the more modern philosophers. Hume in English and Helvetius and Chamfort in French he found to his mind in their sceptical estimates of ordinary virtue. Mystical and ascetic writ- ings, from Buddhism and the Upanishads to Eckhart and the Deutsche Theologie, commended themselves by their in- sistence on the reality of the higher life. Their example of will-force drew his favourable notice to the phenomena of mesmerism, just as his sympathy with the lower brethren of man made him an interested observer of a young orang- outang shown at Frankfort in 1834. He was familiar with several literatures, English certainly not the least. The names of Shakespeare, Scott, Byron, Calderon, Petrarch, Dante, are frequent in his pages. What he read he tried to read in the original, or anywhere but in a German trans- lation. Even the Old Testament he found more impress- ive in the Septuagint version than in Luther's rendering. The hour of noon brought cessation from his contempla- tions, and for half an hour he solaced himself on the flute. At one o'clock he sat down to dinner in his inn, and after dinner came home for an hour's siesta. After some light reading he went out for a stroll, alone, if possible country- wards, with cane in hand, cigar lit, and poodle following. Occasionally he would stop abruptly, turn round or look back, mutter something to himself, so as to leave on the passer-by the impression that he was either crack-brained or angry. Like Kant, he kept his lips closed on principle. His walk over, he retired to the reading-room and studied the Times, for he had been always somewhat of an Anglo- maniac, and had learnt this habit of English life from his father. In winter he would sometimes attend the opera. Between eight and nine he took supper, with a half-bottle of light wine (he avoided his country's beer), at a table by himself. With his low estimate of the average human being, his sympathies were aristocratic. He left the bulk of his fortune to an institution at Berlin for the benefit of those who had suffered on the side of order during the revolu- tionary struggles of 1848-49. But in so doing it was not his sympathy with kings but his recognition of the merits of public security which gave the motive to his actions. With all his eulogy of voluntary poverty, he did not agree to being deprived of his property by the malice or cupidity of others, and fears of the loss of his means haunted him not less keenly than other imaginary terrors, the fancied evils distracting him no less perhaps than would have done those domestic and civil obligations from which he endeavoured to hold himself free. The Nemesis of his social Idchete fell upon him ; and, like all solitaries, he gave an exaggerated importance to trifles, which the sweep of business and customary duty clear away from the ordinary man's memory. It was not till he was fifty years of age that he set up Perso rooms and furniture of his own. These abodes he changed detail at Frankfort about four times, living latterly on the street which runs along the Main. On the mat in his chamber lay his poodle, latterly a brown dog, which had succeeded the original white one, named Atma (the World- Soul), of which he had been especially fond. These dogs had more than once brought him into trouble with his landlord. In a corner of the room was placed a gilt statuette of Buddha, and on a table not far off lay Duperron's Latin translation of the Ujxinuhads, which served as the prayer-book from which Schopenhauer read his devotions. On the desk stood a bust of Kant, and a few portraits hung on the walls. The philosopher's person was under middle size, strongly built and broad-chested, with small hands. His voice was loud and clear ; his eyes blue and somewhat wide apart ; the mouth full and sensuous, latterly becoming broad as his teeth gave way. The high brow and heavy under-jaw were the evidence of his contrasted nature of ample intellect and vigorous im- pulses. In youth he had light curly hair, whereas his beard in manhood was of a slightly reddish tint. He always dressed carefully as a gentleman, in black dress- coat and white necktie, and wore shoes. In his later years his portrait was taken more than once, and by several artists, and his bust was modelled somewhat to his own mind in 1859. Reproductions of these likenesses have made familiar his characteristic but unamiable features. In 1854 Richard Wagner sent him a copy of the Ring of t/te Nibelung, with some words of thanks for a theory of music which had fallen in with his own conceptions. Three years later he received a visit from his old college friend Bunsen, who was then staying in Heidelberg. On his seventieth birthday congratulations flowed in from many quarters. In April 1860 he began to be affected by occasional difficulty in breathing and by palpitation of the heart. Another attack came on in autumn (9th September), and again a week later. On the evening of the 18th his friend and subsequent biographer, Dr Gwinner, sat with him and conversed. On the morning of the 21st September he rose and sat down alone to breakfast ; shortly afterwards his doctor called and found him dead in his chair. By his will, made in 1852, with a codicil dated February 1859, his property, with the ex- ception of some small bequests, was devised to the above- mentioned institution at Berlin. Gwinner was named executor, and Frauenstadt was entrusted with the care of his manuscripts and other literary remains. The philosophy of Schopenhauer, like almost every system of the Philo 19th century, can hardly be understood without reference to the soph; ideas of Kant Anterior to Kant the gradual advance of idealism from had been the most conspicuous feature in philosophic speculation. Kant That the direct objects of knowledge, the realities of experience, Scho] were after all only our ideas or perceptions was the lesson of every liauej thinker from Descartes to Hume. And this doctrine was generally understood to mean that human thought, limited as it was by its own weakness and acquired habits, could hardly hope to cope suc- cessfully with the problem of apprehending the real things. The idealist position Kant seemed at first sight to retain with an even stronger force than ever. But it is darkest just before the dawn ; and Kant, the Copernicus of philosophy, had really altered the aspects of the doctrine of ideas. It was his purpose to show that the forms of thought (which he sought to isolate from the peculi- arities incident to the organic body) were not merely customary means for licking into convenient shape the data of perception, but entered as underlying elements into the constitution of objects, making experience possible and determining the fundamental struc- ture of nature. In other words, the forms of knowledge were the main factor in making objects. By Kant, however, these forms are generally treated psychologically as the action of the several faculties of a mind. Behind thinking there is the thinker. But