Part 44

A single room in a lodging-house sufficed, and this room always had the appearance of being occupied by a transient. He had few books, accumulated no belongings in way of domestic ballast, persistently giving away things that were presented to him, satisfied if he had a chair, a bed, and a table upon which to write; getting his own breakfast, dining at the table d'hote of the nearest inn, with supper at a "Gast-Haus"--so passed his days. He had no intimate friends, and his chief dissipation was playing the flute. His black poodle, named "Homo" in a subtle mood of irony, accompanied him everywhere, and on this dog he lavished what he was pleased to call his love. He anticipated Rip Van Winkle concerning dogs and women, and when Homo died, he bought another dog that looked exactly like the first, and was just as good.

In a few instances Schopenhauer read his essays in public as lectures, but his ideas were keyed to concert pitch and were too pronounced for average audiences. He was offered a professorship at Gottingen and also at Heidelberg, if he would "tone things down," but he scornfully declined the proposition, and said, "The Universities must grow to my level before I can talk to them." By his caustic criticisms of contemporaries he became both feared and shunned, and no doubt he found a certain satisfaction in the fact that the so-called learned men of his time would neither listen to his lectures, read his books, nor abide his presence. He had made himself felt in any event. "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you," is the sweet consolation of all persecuted persons--and persecution is only the natural resentment towards those who have too much ego in their cosmos.

His opinions concerning love and marriage need not be taken too seriously. Ideas are the results of temperaments and moods. When a man amplifies on the woman question he describes the women he knows best, and more especially the particular She who is in his head. Literature is only autobiography, more or less discreetly veiled. Schopenhauer hated his mother to the day of her death, and although during the last twenty-four years of her life he never once saw her, her image could at any time be quickly and vividly thrown upon the screen. The women a strong man has known are never forgotten--here is where time does not tarnish, nor the days grow dim.

Between his twenty-eighth and fortieth years, Schopenhauer had wandered through Italy--spent months at Venice, and dawdled away the days at Rome and Florence. He had dipped deep into life--and the wrong kind of life. And his experiences had confirmed his suspicions--it was all bitter--he was not disappointed.

Until Schopenhauer was past thirty he was known as the son of Johanna Schopenhauer. And when he once told her that posterity would never remember her except as the mother of her son, she reciprocated by congratulating him that his books could always be had cheap in the first editions.

He retorted, "Mamma Dear, my books will be read when butchers are using yours for wrapping up meat." In some ways this precious pair were very much alike.

It is very probable that Schopenhauer's mother was not so base as he thought; and when he declared, "Woman's morality is only a kind of prudence," he might have said the same of his own. He stood aloof from life and said things about it. He had no wife, no child, no business, no home--he dared not venture boldly into the tide of existence--he stood forever on the bank, and watched the current carrying its flotsam and jetsam to the hungry sea.

In his love for the memory of his father, and in his tender care for his dog, we get a glimpse of depths that were never sounded. One side of his nature was never developed. And the words of the undeveloped man are worth what they are worth.

Schopenhauer once said to Wieland, "Life is a ticklish business--I propose to spend my time looking at it." This he did, viewing existence from every angle, and writing out his thoughts in terse, epigrammatic language.

Among all the German writers on philosophy, the only one who had a distinct literary style is Schopenhauer. Form was quite as much to him as matter--and in this he showed rare wisdom; although I am told that the writers who have no literary style are the only ones who despise it. Dishes to be palatable must be rightly served: appetite--literary, gastronomic or sexual--is largely a matter of imagination.

Schopenhauer need not be regarded as final. The chief virtue of the man lies in the fact that he makes us think, and thus are we his debtors.

In this summary of Schopenhauer's philosophy I have had the valuable assistance of my friend and fellow-worker in the Roycroft Shop, George Pannebakker, a kinsman and enthusiastic admirer of the great Prophet of Pessimism.

In talking to Mr. Pannebakker, I am inclined to exclaim, "Thou almost persuadest me to be a pessimist!" It is unfortunate that our English tongue contains no word that stands somewhere between pessimism and optimism--that symbols a judicial cast of mind which sees the Truth without blinking and accepts it without complaint. The word Pessimist was first flung in contempt at those who dared to express unpalatable truth. It is now accepted by a large number of intellectuals, and if to be a pessimist is to have insight, wit, calm courage, patience, persistency, and a disposition that accepts all Fate sends and makes the best of it, then pity 'tis we haven't more.

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The root of existence, the inmost kernel of all being, the original vitalizing power, the fundamental reality of the universe, is, according to Schopenhauer, "WILL." What is Will? Will, in the usual sense, is the faculty of our mind by which we decide to do or not to do. Will is the power to choose. In Schopenhauer's philosophy, Will is something less as we know will, and something more than force. Will, connected with consciousness, as peculiar to man, is, in a less developed form, the real essence of all matter, of all things, organic or inorganic. Will is the blind, irresistible striving for existence; the unconscious organizing power, the omnipotent creative force of Nature, pervading the whole limitless universe; the endeavor to be, to evolve, to expand.

The whole world of phenomena is the objectivation or apparition of Will.

Will, the same force which slumbers in the stone as inert gravity, forms the crystals with such wonderful regularity.

Will impels a piece of iron to move with ardent desire toward the magnet. Will causes the magnet to point with unfailing constancy to the north. Will causes the embryo to cling as a parasite and feed on the body of the mother. Will causes the mother's breast to fill that her babe may be fed. Will fills the mother-heart with love that the young may be cared for.

The same force urges the tender germ of the plant to break through the hard crust of the earth and, stretching toward the light, to enfold itself in the proud crown of the palm-tree. Will sharpens the beak of the eagle and the tooth of the tiger and, finally, reaches its highest grade of objectivation in the human brain. Want, the struggle for existence, the necessity of procuring and selecting sufficient food for the preservation of the individual and the species, has at last developed a suitable tool, the brain, and its function, the intellect. With the intellect appear consciousness and a realm of rational life full of yearning and desires, pleasures and pain, hatred and love. Brothers slay their brothers, conquerors trample down the races of the earth, and tyrants are forging chains for the nations.

There is violence and fear, vexation and trouble. Unrest is the mark of existence, and onward we are swept in the hurrying whirlpool of change. This manifold restless motion is produced and kept up by the agency of two single impulses--hunger and the sexual instinct. These are the chief agents of the Lord of the Universe--the Will--and set in motion so strange and varied a scene.

The Will-to-Live is at the bottom of all love-affairs. Every kind of love springs entirely from the instinct of sex.

Love is under bonds to secure the existence of the human race in future times. The real aim of the whole of love's romance, although the persons concerned are unconscious of the fact, is that a particular being may come into the world.

It is the Will-to-Live, presenting itself in the whole species, which so forcibly and exclusively attracts two individuals of different sex towards each other.

This yearning and this pain do not arise from the needs of an ephemeral individual, but are, on the contrary, the sigh of the Spirit of the Species.

Since life is essentially suffering, the propagation of the species is an evil--the feeling of shame proves it.

In his "Metaphysics of Love," Schopenhauer says: "We see a pair of lovers exchanging longing glances--yet why so secretly, timidly and stealthily? Because these lovers are traitors secretly striving to perpetuate all the misery and turmoil that otherwise would come to a timely end."

Will, as the source of life, is the origin of all evil.

Having awakened to life from the night of unconsciousness, the individual finds itself in an endless and boundless world, striving, suffering, erring; and, as though passing through an ominous dream, it hurries back to the old unconsciousness. Until then, however, its desires are boundless, and every satisfied wish begets a new one. So-called pleasures are only a mode of temporary relief. Pain soon returns in the form of satiety. Life is a more or less violent oscillation between pain and ennui. The latter, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to swoop down wherever it sees a life secure from need.