Part 46

"Oh, anywhere--posterity will find me!" was the answer. And so on the modest stone that marks his resting-place at Frankfort, are engraved the two words, ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, and nothing more. The world will not soon forget the pessimist who had such undying optimism--such unquenchable faith--that he knew the world would make a path to his tomb.

Schopenhauer was the only prominent writer that ever lived who persistently affirmed that life is an evil--existence a curse. Yet every man who has ever lived has at times thought so; but to proclaim the thought--or even entertain it long--would stagger sanity, befog the intellect and make mind lose its way.

And yet we prize Schopenhauer the more for having said the thing that we secretly thought; in some subtle way we get a satisfaction out of his statement, and at the same time, we perceive the man was wrong.

The man who can vivisect an emotion, and lay bare a heart-beat in print, knows a subtle joy. The misery that can explain itself is not all misery. Complete misery is dumb; and pain that is all pain is quickly transformed into insensibility. Schopenhauer's life was quite as happy as that of many men who persistently depress us by requesting us to "cheer up." Schopenhauer says, "Don't try to cheer up--the worst is yet to come." And we can not refrain a smile. A mother once called to her little boy to come into the house. And the boy answered, "I won't do it!" And the mother replied, "Stay out then!" And very soon the child came in.

Truth is only a point of view, and when a man tells us what he sees, we swiftly take into consideration who and what the man is. Everybody does this, unconsciously. It depends upon who says it! The garrulous man who habitually overstates--painting things large--does not deceive anybody, and is quite as good a companion as the painstaking, exact man who is always setting us straight on our statistics. One man we take gross and the other net. The liar gross is all right, but the liar net is very bad.

Schopenhauer was a talkative, whimsical and sensitive personality, with a fine assortment of harmless superstitions of his own manufacture. He was vain, frivolous, self-absorbed, but he had an eye for the subtleties of existence that quite escape the average individual. He lived in a world of mind--alert, active, receptive mind--with a rapid-fire gun in way of a caustic, biting, scathing vocabulary at his command.

The test of every literary work is time. The trite, the commonplace, and the irrelevant die and turn to dust. The vital lives. Schopenhauer began writing in his youth. Neglect, indifference and contempt were his portion until he was over fifty years of age. His passion for truth was so repelling that the Mutual Admiration Society refused to record his name even on its waiting-list. He was of that elect few who early in life succeed in ridding themselves of the friendship of the many. His enemies discovered him first, and gave him to the world, and after they had launched his fame with their charges of plagiarism, pretense, bombast, insincerity and fraud, he has never been out of the limelight, and in favor he has steadily grown.

No man was ever more thoroughly denounced than Schopenhauer, but even his most rabid foe never accused him of buying his way into popular favor, or bribing the judges who sit on the bookcase.

We admire the man because he is such a sublime egotist--he is so fearfully honest. We love him because he is so often wrong in his conclusions: he gives us the joy of putting him straight.

Schopenhauer's writing is never the product of a tired pen and ink unstirred by the spirit. With him we lose our self-consciousness.

And the man who can make other men forget themselves has conferred upon the world a priceless boon. Introspection is insanity--to open the windows and look out is health.

HENRY D. THOREAU

Seeing how all the world's ways came to nought, And how Death's one decree merged all degrees, He chose to pass his time with birds and trees, Reduced his life to sane necessities: Plain meat and drink and sleep and noble thought. And the plump kine which waded to the knees Through the lush grass, knowing the luxuries Of succulent mouthfuls, had our gold-disease As much as he, who only Nature sought.

Who gives up much the gods give more in turn: The music of the spheres for dross of gold; For o'er-officious cares, flame-songs that burn Their pathway through the years and never old. And he who shunned vain cares and vainer strife Found an eternity in one short life.

As a rule, the man who can do all things equally well is a very mediocre individual. Those who stand out before a groping world as beacon-lights were men of great faults and unequal performances. It is quite needless to add that they do not live on account of their faults or imperfections, but in spite of them.

Henry David Thoreau's place in the common heart of humanity grows firmer and more secure as the seasons pass; his life proves for us again the paradoxical fact that the only men who really succeed are those who fail.

Thoreau's obscurity, his poverty, his lack of public recognition in life, either as a writer or lecturer, his rejection as a lover, his failure in business, and his early death, form a combination of calamities that make him as immortal as a martyr. Especially does an early death sanctify all and make the record complete, but the death of a naturalist while right at the height of his ability to see and enjoy--death from tuberculosis of a man who lived most of the time in the open air--these things array us on the side of the man 'gainst unkind Fate, and cement our sympathy and love.

Nature's care forever is for the species, and the individual is sacrificed without ruth that the race may live and progress. This dumb indifference of Nature to the individual--this apparent contempt for the man--seems to prove that the individual is only a phenomenon. Man is merely a manifestation, a symptom, a symbol, and his quick passing proves that he isn't the Thing. Nature does not care for him--she produces a million beings in order to get one who has thoughts--all are swept into the dustpan of oblivion but the one who thinks; he alone lives, embalmed in the memories of generations unborn.

One of the most insistent errors ever put out was that statement of Rousseau, paraphrased in part by T. Jefferson, that all men are born free and equal. No man was ever born free, and none are equal, and would not remain so an hour, even if Jove, through caprice, should make them so.

The Thoreau race is dead. In Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord there is a monument marking a row of mounds where a half-dozen Thoreaus rest. The inscriptions are all of one size, but the name of one alone lives, and he lives because he had thoughts and expressed them. If any of the tribe of Thoreau gets into Elysium, it will be by tagging close to the only man among them who glorified his Maker by using his reason.

Nothing should be claimed as truth that can not be demonstrated, but as a hypothesis (borrowed from Henry Thoreau) I give you this: Man is only the tool or vehicle--Mind alone is immortal--Thought is the Thing.

* * * * *

Heredity does not account for the evolution of Henry Thoreau. His father was of French descent--a plain, stolid, little man who settled in Concord with his parents when a child; later he tried business in Boston, but the march of commerce resolved itself into a double-quick, and John Thoreau dropped out of line, and turned to the country village of Concord, where he hoped that between making lead-pencils and gardening he might secure a living.

He moved better than he knew.

John Thoreau's wife was Cynthia Dunbar, a tall and handsome woman, with a ready tongue and nimble wit. Her attentions were largely occupied in looking after the affairs of the neighbors, and as the years went by her voice took on the good old metallic twang of the person who discusses people, not principles.

Henry Thoreau was the third child in the family of seven. He was born in an old house on the Virginia Road, Concord, about a mile and a half from the village. This house was the home of Mrs. Thoreau's mother, but the Thoreaus had taken refuge there, temporarily, to escape a financial blizzard which seems to have hit no one else but themselves.

John Thoreau was assisted in the pencil-making by the whole family. The Thoreaus used to sell their pencils down at Cambridge, fifteen miles away, and Harvard professors, for the most part, used the Concord article in jotting down their sublime thoughts. At ten years of age, Thoreau had a furtive eye on Harvard, directed thither, they say, by his mother. All the best people in Concord, who had sons, sent them to Harvard--why shouldn't the Thoreaus? The spirit of emulation and family pride were at work.

Henry was educated principally because he wasn't very strong, nor was he on good terms with work, and these are classic reasons for imparting classical education to youth, aspiring or otherwise.