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SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR (1788-186o)
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See also:SCHOPENHAUER, See also:ARTHUR (1788-186o) , See also:German philosopher, was See also:born in See also:Danzig on the 22nd of See also:February 1788. His parents belonged to the See also:mercantile See also:aristocracy—the bankers and traders of Danzig. His See also:father, Heinrich See also:Floris Schopenhauer, the youngest of a See also:family to which the See also:mother had brought the germs of See also:mental malady, was a See also:man of strong will and originality, and so proud of the See also:independence of his native See also:town that when Danzig in 1793 surrendered to the Prussians he and his whole See also:establishment withdrew to See also:Hamburg: At the See also:age of See also:forty he married Johanna Henrietta Trosiener, then only twenty, but the See also:marriage owing to difference of temperament was unhappy. Their two See also:children, Arthur and Adele (born 1796), See also:bore the See also:penalty of their parents' incompatibilities. They were burdened by an abnormal urgency of See also:desire and capacity for suffering, which no doubt took different phases in the man and the woman, but linked them together in a See also:common susceptibility to ideal See also:pain.' In the summer of 1787, a See also:year after the marriage, the See also:elder Schopenhauer, whom commercial experiences had made a See also:cosmopolitan in See also:heart, took his wife on a tour to western See also:Europe. It had been his See also:plan that the expected See also:child should see the See also:light in See also:England, but the intention was frustrated by the See also:state of his wife's See also:health. The name Arthur was chosen because it remains the same in See also:English, See also:French and German. During the twelve years which followed the removal of the family to Hamburg (1793-1805) the Schopenhauers made frequent excursions. From 1797 to 1799 Arthur was a boarder with M. See also:Gregoire, a See also:merchant of See also:Havre, and friend of the Hamburg See also:house, with whose son Anthime he formed a fast friendship. Returning to Hamburg, for the next four years he had but indifferent training. When he reached the age of fifteen the scholarly and See also:literary instincts began to awaken. But his father, steeped in the spirit of See also:commerce, was unwilling that a son of his should See also:worship knowledge and truth. Accordingly he offered his son the choice between the classical school and an excursion to England. A boy of fifteen could scarcely hesitate. In 1803 the Schopenhauers and their son set out on a lengthened tour, of which Johanna has given an See also:account, to See also: See Laura See also:Frost, Johanna Schopenhauer: ein Frauenleben (1905). symptoms of mental See also:alienation, See also:fell or threw himself into the See also:canal. After his See also:death the See also:young widow (still under forty), leaving Arthur at Hamburg, proceeded with her daughter Adele in the See also:middle of r8o6 to See also:Weimar, where she arrived only e fortnight before the tribulation which followed the victory of See also:Napoleon at See also:Jena. At Weimar her talents, hitherto held in check, found an See also:atmosphere to stimulate and See also:foster them; her aesthetic and literary tastes formed themselves under the See also:influence of See also:Goethe and his circle, and her little See also:salon gained a certain celebrity. Arthur, meanwhile, became more and more restless, and his mother allowed him to leave his employment. He began his See also:education again at See also:Gotha, but a See also:satire on one of the teachers led to his dismissal. He was then placed with the See also:Greek See also:scholar See also:Franz See also:Passow, who superintended his classical studies. This time he made so much progress that in two years he read Greek and Latin with fluency and See also:interest. In 18o9 his mother handed over to him (aged twenty-one) the third See also:part of the paternal See also:estate, which gave him an income of £150, and in See also:October 18o9 he entered the university of See also:Gottingen. The direction of his philosophical See also:reading was fixed by the See also:advice of G. E. Schulze to study, especially, See also:Plato and See also:Kant. For the former he soon found himself full of reverence, and from the latter he acquired the standpoint of See also:modern See also:philosophy. The names of " Plato the divine and the marvellous Kant " are conjunctly invoked at the beginning of his earliest See also:work. But even at this See also:stage of his career the See also:pessimism of his later writings began to See also:manifest itself, together with a susceptibility to morbid fears which led him to keep loaded weapons always at his bedside. He was a man of few acquaintances, amongst the few being See also:Bunsen, the subsequent scholar-diplomatist, and Bunsen's See also:pupil, W. B. See also:Astor, the son of Washing-ton See also:Irving's millionaire See also:hero. Even then he found his trustiest See also:mate in a poodle, and its bearskin was an institution in his lodging. Yet, precisely because he met the See also:world so seldom in easy See also:dialogue, he was unnecessarily dogmatic in controversy; and many a See also:bottle of See also:wine went to pay for lost wagers. But he had made up his mind to be not an actor but an onlooker and critic in the See also:battle of See also:life; and when See also:Wieland, whom he met on one of his excursions, suggested doubts as to the See also:wisdom of his choice, Schopenhauer replied, " Life is a ticklish business; I have resolved to spend it in reflecting upon it." After two years at Gottingen he took two years at See also:Berlin. Here also he dipped into See also:divers stores of learning, notably See also:classics under See also:Wolf. In philosophy he heard See also:Fichte and See also:Schleiermacher. Between 1811 and 1813 the lectures of Fichte (subsequently published from his notes in his Nachgelassene Werke) dealt with what he called the " facts of consciousness " and the " theory of See also:science," and struggled to See also:present his final conception of philosophy. These lectures Schopenhauer attended—at first, it is allowed, with interest, but afterwards with a spirit of opposition which is said to have degenerated into contempt, and which in after years never permitted him to refer to Fichte without contumely. Yet the words Schopenhauer then listened to, often with baffled curiosity, certainly influenced his See also:speculation. In Berlin Schopenhauer was lonely and unhappy. One of his interests was to visit the See also:hospital La Charite and study the See also:evidence it afforded of the interdependence of the moral and the See also:physical in man. In the See also:early days of 1813 sympathy with the See also:national See also:enthusiasm against the French carried him so far as to buy a set of arms; but he stopped See also:short of volunteering for active service, reflecting that Napoleon gave after all only concentrated and untrammelled utterance to that self-assertion and lust for more life which weaker mortals feel but must per-force disguise. Leaving the nation and its statesmen to fight out their freedom, he hurried away to Weimar, and thence to the quiet Thuringian town of See also:Rudolstadt, where in the See also:inn " Zum See also:Ritter," out of sight of soldier and See also:sound of See also:drum, he wrote, helped by books from the Weimar library, his See also:essay for the degree of See also:doctor in philosophy. On the 2nd of October 1813 he received his diploma from Jena; and in the same year from the See also:press at Rudolstadt there was published—withoutwinning See also:notice or readers—his first See also:book, Uber die vierfache Wurzel See also:des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde, trans. in See also:Bohn's Philological Library (1889). In See also:November 1813 Schopenhauer returned to Weimar, and for a few months boarded with his mother. But the See also:strain of daily association was too much for their antagonistic natures. His splenetic See also:temper and her volatility culminated in an open rupture in May 1814. From that time till her death in 1838 Schopenhauer never saw his mother again. During these few months at Weimar, however, he made some acquaintances destined to influence the subsequent course of his thought. Conversations with the Orientalist F. See also:Mayer directed his studies to the philosophical speculations of See also:ancient See also:India. In 18o8 See also:Friedrich See also:Schlegel had in his See also:Language and Wisdom of the Old See also:Hindus brought Brahmanical philosophy within the range of See also:European literature. Still more instructive for Schopenhauer was the imperfect and obscure Latin See also:translation of the Upanishads which in 18o1–18o2 See also:Anquetil See also:Duperron had published from a See also:Persian version of the See also:Sanskrit See also:original. Another friend-See also:ship of the same See also:period had more palpable immediate effect, but not so permanent. This was with Goethe, who succeeded in securing his interest for those investigations on See also:colours on which he was himself engaged. Schopenhauer took up the subject in See also:earnest, and the result of his reflexions (and a few elementary observations) soon after appeared (See also:Easter 1816) as a monograph, Uber das Sehen. and die Farben (ed. See also:Leipzig, 1854). The essay, which must be treated as an See also:episode or digression from the See also:direct path of Schopenhauer's development, due to the potent force of Goethe, was written at See also:Dresden, to which he had transferred his See also:abode after the rupture with his mother. It had been sent in MS. to Goethe in the autumn of 1815, who, finding in it a transformation rather than an expan- See also:sion of his own ideas, inclined to regard the author as an opponent rather than an adherent. The pamphlet begins by re-stating with reference to sight the See also:general theory that See also:perception of an See also:objective world rests upon an instinctive causal postulation, which even when it misleads Essay on still remains to haunt us (instead of being, like errors of sight and See also:reason, open to extirpation by evidence), and proceeds to coionrs. See also:deal with physiological See also:colour, i.e. with colours as See also:felt (not perceived) modifications of the See also:action of the retina. First of all, the distinction of See also: Waring See also:Darwin in vol. lxxvi. of the Transactions of the Philosophical Society. See also:escape is possible from the spectre of See also:materialism, theoretical and See also:practical; and so, says Schopenhauer, " the just and See also:good must all have this creed: I believe in a metaphysic." The See also:mere. reasonings of theoretical science leave no See also:room for art, and practical prudence usurps the See also:place of morality. The higher life of aesthetic and ethical activity—the beautiful and the good—can only be based upon an See also:intuition which penetrates the heart of reality. Towards the See also:spring of 1818 the work was nearing its end, and See also:Brockhaus of Leipzig had agreed to publish it and pay the author one See also:ducat for every See also:sheet of printed See also:matter. But, as the press loitered, Schopenhauer, suspecting treachery, wrote so rudely and haughtily to the publisher that the latter See also:broke off See also:correspondence with his client. In the end of 1818, however, the book appeared (with the date 1819) as Die Welt als Wille and Vorstellung, in four books, with an appendix containing a criticism of the Kantian philosophy (Eng. trans. by R. B. See also:Haldane and J. See also:Kemp, 1883). See also:Long before the work had come to the hands of the public Schopenhauer had rushed off to See also:Italy. He stayed for a time in See also:Venice, where See also:Byron was then living; but the two did not meet. At See also:Rome he visited the art galleries, the See also:opera, the See also:theatre, and gladly seized every See also:chance of conversing in English with Englishmen. In See also: In vain did he See also:watch for any sign of recognition of his philosophic See also:genius. Hegelianism reigned in the See also:schools and in literature and basked in the See also:sunshine of authority. Thus driven back upon himself, Schopenhauer fell into morbid meditations, and the world which he saw, if it was stripped naked of its disguises, lost its proportions in the distorting light. The sexual See also:passion had a strong attraction for him at all times, and, according to his biographers, the notes he set down in English, when he was turned See also:thirty, on marriage and kindred topics are unfit for publication. Yet in the loneliness of life at Berlin the idea of a wife as the comfort of gathering age sometimes See also:rose before his mind—only to be driven away by cautious hesitations as to the capacity of his means, and by the shrinking from the loss of See also:familiar liberties. He wrote nothing material. In 1828 he made inquiries about a See also:chair at Heidelberg; and in 183o he got a shortened Latin version of his physiological theory of colours inserted in the.third volume of the Scriptores ophthalmologici minores (edited by See also:Radius).
Another pathway to reputation was suggested by some remarks he saw in the seventh number of the See also:Foreign See also:Review, in an See also:article on See also:Damiron's French Philosophy in the 19th See also:Century. With reference to some statements in the article on the importance of Kant, he sent in very See also:fair English a See also:letter to the writer, offering to translate Kant's See also:principal See also:works into English. He named his See also:wages and enclosed a specimen of his work. His correspondent, See also:Francis See also:Haywood, made a See also:counter-proposal which so disgusted Schopenhauer that he addressed his next letter to the publishers of the review. When they again referred him to Haywood, he applied to See also: Nothing came of this application .l A translation of selections from the works of Balthazar Gracian, which was published by Frauenstadt in 1862, seems to have been made about this time.2 In 1833 he settled finally at See also:Frankfort, gloomily waiting for the recognition of his work, and terrified by fears of assassination and See also:robbery. As the years passed he noted down every See also:confirmation he found of his own opinions in the writings of others, and every instance in which his views appeared to be illustrated by new researches. Full of the conviction of his idea, he saw everything in the light of it, and gave each apercu a place in his alphabetically arranged See also:note-book. Everything he published in later life may be called a commentary, an excursus or a scholium to his See also:main book; and many of them are decidedly of the nature of common-place books or collectanea of notes. But along with the ac-cumulation of his illustrative and corroborative materials See also:grew the bitterness of heart which found its utterances neglected and other names the oracles of the reading world. The gathered See also:ill-See also:humour of many years, aggravated by the confident assurance of the Hegelians, found vent at length in the introduction to his next book, where See also:Hegel's works are described as three-quarters utter absurdity and one-See also:quarter mere See also:paradox—a specimen of the language in which during his subsequent career he used to advert to his three predecessors Fichte, See also:Schelling, but above all Hegel. This work, with its See also:wild outcry against the philosophy of the professoriate, was entitled Ober den Willen in der Natur, and was published in 1836 (revised and enlarged, 1854; Eng. trans., 1889). In 1837 Schopenhauer sent to the See also:committee entrusted with the See also:execution of the proposed See also:monument to Goethe at See also:Frank-fort a long and deliberate expression of his views, in general and particular, on the best mode of carrying out the See also:design. But his See also:fellow-citizens passed by the remarks of the mere writer of books. More See also:weight was naturally attached to the See also:opinion he had advocated in his early criticism of Kant as to the importance, if not the superiority, of the first edition of the Kritik; in the collected issue of Kant's works by See also:Rosenkranz and See also:Schubert in 1838 that edition was put as the substantive See also:text, with supplementary See also:exhibition of the See also:differences of the second. In 1841 he published under the See also:title Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik two essays which he had sent in 1838–1839 in competition for prizes offered. The first was in See also:answer to the question " Whether man's See also:free will can be proved from self-consciousness," proposed by the See also:Norwegian See also:Academy of Sciences at Drontheim. His essay was awarded the See also:prize, and the author elected a member of the society. But proportionate to his exultation in this first recognition of his merit was the See also:depth of his See also:mortification and the height of his indignation at the result of the second competition. He had sent to the Danish Academy at See also:Copenhagen in 1839 an essay " On the See also:Foundations of Morality " in answer to a vaguely worded subject of discussion to which they had invited candidates. His essay, though it was the only one in competition, was refused the prize on the grounds that he had failed to examine the See also:chief problem (i.e. whether the basis of morality was to be sought in an intuitive idea of right), that his explanation was inadequate, and that he had been wanting in due respect to the summi philosophi of the age that was just passing. This last reason, while probably most effective with the See also:judges, only stirred up more furiously the fury in Schopenhauer's See also:breast, and his See also:preface is one long fulmination against the ineptitudes and the charlatanry of his bete noire, Hegel. In 1844 appeared the second edition of The World as Will and Idea, in two volumes. The first volume was a slightly altered reprint of the earlier issue; the second consisted of a See also:series of chapters forming a commentary parallel to those into which the original work was now first divided. The longest of these new chapters deal with the primacy of the will, with death and with the See also:metaphysics of sexual love. But, though. only a small edition was struck off (50o copies of vol. i. and 750 of vol. ii.), 1 It was not till 1841 that a translation of Kant's Kritik in English appeared. 2 He also projected a translation of See also:Hume's Essays and wrote a preface for it. the See also:report of sales which Brockhaus rendered in 1846 was unfavourable, and the See also:price had afterwards to be reduced. Yet there were faint indications of coming fame, and the eagerness with which each new See also:tribute from critic and admirer was welcomed is both touching and amusing. From 1843 onwards a jurist named F. Dorguth had trumpeted abroad Schopenhauer's name. In 1844 a letter from a See also:Darmstadt lawyer, Joh. August See also:Becker, asking for explanation of some difficulties, began an intimate correspondence which went on for some time (and which was published by Becker's son in 1883). But the chief evangelist (so Schopenhauer styled his literary followers as distinct from the apostles who published not) was Frauenstadt, who made his See also:personal acquaintance in 1846. It was Frauenstadt who succeeded in finding a publisher for the Parerga undParalipomena, which appeared at Berlin in 1851 (2 vols., pp. 465, 531; sel. trans. by J. B. Saunders, 1889; French by A. See also:Dietrich, 1909). Yet for this bulky collection of essays, philosophical and others, Schopenhauer received as honorarium only ten free copies of the work. Soon afterwards, Dr E. O. Lindner, assistant editor of the Vossische Zeitung, began a series of Schopenhauerite articles. Amongst them may be reckoned a translation by Mrs Lindner of an article by See also: On the See also: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 See also:codicil dated February 1859, his See also:property, with the exception 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 See also:manuscripts and other literary remains. It is often said that a philosophic system cannot be rightly understood without reference to the character and circumstances of the philosopher. The remark finds ample application in the See also:case of Schopenhauer. The conditions of his training, which brought him in contact with the realities of life before he learned the phrases of scholastic language, give to his words the See also:stamp of self-seen truth and the clearness of original conviction. They explain at the same time the naivete which set a high price on the products his own energies had turned out, and could not see that what was so original to himself might seem less unique to other judges. Preoccupied with his own ideas, he chafed under the indifference of thinkers who had grown blase in speculation and fancied himself persecuted by a See also:conspiracy of professors of philosophy. It is not so easy to demonstrate the connexion between a man's life and doctrine. But it is at least See also:plain that in the case of any philosopher, what makes him such is the See also:faculty he has, more than other men, to get a clear idea of what he himselfis and does. More than others he leads a second life in the spirit or See also:intellect alongside of his life in the flesh—the life of knowledge beside the life of will. It is inevitable that he should be especially struck by the points in which the sensible and temporal life comes in conflict with the intellectual and eternal. It was thus that Schopenhauer by his own experience saw in the primacy of the will the fundamental fact of his philosophy, and found in the See also:engrossing interests of the selfish Epws the perennial hindrances of the higher life. For his See also:absolute See also:individualism, which recognizes in the state, the See also: In other words, the forms of knowledge were the main See also: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 in his successors, from Fichte to Hegel, this See also:axiom of the plain man is set aside as antiquated. Thought or conception without a subject-See also:agent appears as the principle—thought or thinking in its universality without any individual substrata in which it is embodied: rd See also:soap or skais is to be substituted for vows. This is the step of advance which is required alike by Fichte when he asks his reader to rise from the empirical ego to the ego which is subject-See also:object (i.e. neither and both), and by Hegel when he tries to substitute the Begrii' or notion for the Vorstellung or pictorial conception. As spiritism asks us to accept such suspension of See also:ordinary See also:mechanics as permits human bodies to See also:float through the See also:air and part without injury to their members, so the new philosophy of Kant's immediate successors requires from the postulant for See also:initiation willingness to See also:reverse his customary beliefs in quasi-material subjects of thought.
But, besides removing the psychological slag which clung to Kant's ideas from their See also:matrix and presenting reason as the active principle in the formation of a universe, his successors carried out with far more detail, and far more enthusiasm and See also:historical See also:scope, his principle that in reason lay the a priori or the anticipation of the world, moral and physical. Not content with the barren assertion that the understanding makes nature, and that we can construct science only on the See also:hypothesis that there is reason in the world, they proceeded to show how the thing was actually done. But to do so they had first to See also:brush away a See also: It marks only that we feel our knowledge to be inadequate, and for the reason that there may be another See also:species of sensation than ours, that other beings may not be tied by the See also:special See also:laws of our constitution, and may apprehend, as Plato says, by the soul itself apart from the senses. But this See also:limitation, say the successors of Kant, rests upon a misconception. The sense of inadequacy is only a See also:condition of growing knowledge in a being subject to the laws of space and time; and the very feeling is a See also:proof of its implicit removal. Look at reason not in its single temporal manifestations but in its eternal operation, and then this universal thought, which may be called See also:God, as the sense-conditioned reason is called man, becomes the very breath and structure of the world. Thus in the true idea of things there is no irreducible residuum of matter: mind is the See also:Alpha and Omega, at once the initial postulate and the final truth of reality. In various ways a reaction arose against this absorption of every-thing in reason. In Fichte himself the source of being is primeval activity, the groundless and incomprehensible See also:deed-action (That-Harzdlung) of the absolute ego. The innermost character of that ego is an infinitude in See also:act and effort. " The will is the living principle of reason." he says again. " In the last resort," says Schelling (18og), in his Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, " there is no other being but will. Wollen ist Ursein (will is primal being) ; and to this alone apply the predicates fathomless, eternal, See also:independent of time, self-affirming." It is unnecessary to multiply instances to prove that idealism was never without a protest that there is a heart of existence, life, will, action, which is presupposed by all knowledge and is not itself amenable to explanation. We may, if we like, See also:call this See also:element, which is assumed as the basis of all scientific method, irrational—will instead of reason, feeling rather than knowledge. It is under the banner of this protest against rationalizing idealism that Schopenhauer advances. But what marks out his armament is its pronounced See also:realism. He fights with the weapons of physical doctrine and on the basis of the material See also:earth. He knows no reason but the human, no intelligence See also:save what is exhibited by the animals. He knows that both animals and men have come into existence within assignable limits of time, and that there was an anterior age when no eye or ear gathered the life of the universe into perceptions. Knowledge, therefore, with its vehicle, the intellect, is dependent upon the existence of certain See also:nerve-See also:organs located in an See also:animal system; and its See also:function is originally only to present an See also:image of the interconnexions of the manifestations external to the individual organism, and so to give to the individual in a partial and reflected See also:form that feeling with other things, or innate sympathy, which it loses as organization becomes more complex and characteristic. Knowledge or intellect, therefore, is only the See also:surrogate of that more intimate unity of feeling or will which is the underlying reality—the principle of all existence, the essence of all manifestations, inorganic and organic. And the perfection of reason is attained when man has transcended those limits of individuation in which his know-ledge at first presents him to himself, when by art he has risen from single objects to universal types, and by suffering and See also:sacrifice has penetrated to that innermost See also:sanctuary where the euthanasia of consciousness is reached—the blessedness of eternal repose. In substantials the theory of Schopenhauer may be compared with a more prosaic statement of See also:Herbert See also:Spencer (modernizing Schopen- Hume). All psychical states may, according to him, be Schopand treated as incidents of the correspondence between the Herbert organism and its environment. In this See also:adjustment the spencer. lowest stage is taken by reflex action and See also:instinct, where the See also:change of the organs is purely automatic. As the external complexity increases, this automatic regularity fails; there is only an incipient excitation of the nerves. This feeble See also:echo of the full response to stimulus is an idea, which is thus only another word for imperfect organization or adjustment. But gradually this imperfect correspondence is improved, and the idea passes over again into the state of unconscious or organic memory. Intellect, in short, is only the consequence of insufficient response between stimulus and action. Where action is entirely automatic, feeling does not exist. It is when the excitation is partial only, when it does not inevitably and immediately appear as action, that we have the See also:appearance of intellect in the See also:gap. The chief and fundamental difference between Schopenhauer and Spencer lies in the refusal of the latter to give this " adjustment " or " automatic action " the name of will. Will, according to Mr Spencer, is only another aspect of what is reason, memory or feeling—the difference lying in the fact that as will the nascent excitation (ideal See also:motion) is conceived as passing into See also:complete or full motion. But he agrees with Schopenhauer in basing consciousness, in all its forms of reason, feeling or will, upon " automatic See also:movement—psychical change," from which consciousness emerges and in which it disappears. What Schopenhauer professed, therefore, is to have dispelled the claims of reason to priority and to demonstrate the relativity Matn and limitation of science. Science, he reminds us, is tendencies based on final inexplicabilities; and its attempts by oghts theories of See also:evolution to find an historical origin for system. humanity in rudimentary matter show a misconception of the problem. In the successions of material states there can nowhere be an absolute first. The true origin of man, as of all else, is to be_ sought in an action which is See also:everlasting and which is ever present: nec to quaesiveris extra. There is a source of knowledge within us by which we know, and more intimately than we can ever know anything external, that we will and feel. That is the first and the highest knowledge, the only knowledge that can strictly be called immediate; and to ourselves we as the subject of will are truly the " immediate object." It is in this sense of will—of will without motives, but not without consciousness of some sort—that reality is revealed. See also:Analogy and experience make us assume it to be omnipresent. It is a See also:mistake to say will means for Schopenhauer only force. It means a See also:great dealmore; and it is his contention that what the scientist calls force is really will. In so doing he is only following the See also:line predicted by Kant' and anticipated by See also:Leibnitz. If we wish, said Kant, to give a real existence to the thing in itself or the See also:noumenon we can only do so by investing it with the attributes found in our own See also:internal sense, viz. with thinking or something analogous thereto. It is thus that See also:Fechner in his " day-view " of things See also:sees in See also:plants and See also:planets the same fundamental " soul " as in us—that is, " one See also:simple being which appears to none but itself, in us as elsewhere wherever it occurs self-luminous, dark for every other eye, at the least connecting sensations in itself, upon which, as the grade of soul mounts higher and higher, there is constructed the consciousness of higher and still higher relations." 2 It is thus that See also:Lotze declares3 that " behind the tranquil See also:surface of matter, behind its rigid and See also:regular habits of behaviour, we are forced to seek the glow of a hidden spiritual activity." So Schopenhauer, but in a way all his own, finds the truth of things in a will which is indeed unaffected by conscious motives and yet cannot be separated from some faint analogue of non-intellectual consciousness. In two ways Schopenhauer has influenced the world. He has shown with unusual lucidity of expression how feeble is the spontaneity of that intellect which is so highly lauded, and how over-powering the sway of original will in all our action. He thus re-asserted realism, whose See also:gospel reads, " In the beginning was appetite, passion, will," and has discredited the doctrinaire belief that ideas have original force of their own. This creed of See also:naturalism is dangerous, and it may be true that the pessimism it implies often degenerates into cynicism and a See also:cold-blooded denial that there is any virtue and any truth. But in the See also:crash of established See also:creeds and the spread of See also:political indifferentism and social disintegration it is probably See also:wise, if not always agreeable, to lay See also:bare the wounds under which humanity suffers, though See also:pride would prompt their concealment. But Schopenhauer's theory has another See also:side. 'If it is daringly realistic, it is no less audacious in its idealism. The second aspect of his influence is the doctrine of redemption of the soul from its sensual bonds, first by the See also:medium of art and second by the path of renunciation and ascetic life. It may be difficult in each case to draw the line between social See also:duty and individual perfection. But Schopenhauer reminds us that the welfare of society is a temporal and subordinate aim, never to be allowed to See also:dwarf the full realization of our ideal being. Man's duty is undoubtedly to join in the common service of sentient beings; but his final See also:goal is to rise above the toils and comforts of the visible creature into the vast bosom of a peaceful See also:Nirvana. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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