Schopenhauer

CHAPTER I. Schopenhauer's Life

SCHOPENHAUER'S LIFE

Arthur Schopenhauer led the outwardly uneventful life of a scholar and a thinker, taking no part in public affairs. The great movements in European history, through which he lived, left him untroubled and unmoved in his scholar's seclusion. There is little therefore to chronicle with regard to the outer history of his life. It is the more easy to escape the criticism of Schopenhauer himself, who says that "those who, instead of studying the thoughts of a philosopher, make themselves acquainted with his life and history, are like people who instead of occupying themselves with a picture, are rather occupied with its frame, reflecting on the taste of its carving and the nature of its gilding."

The little that there is to tell is, however, of great significance with regard to the development of his thought. For of no philosopher can it be more truly said than of Schopenhauer, that his thought is the expression of his character.

Schopenhauer was born at Dantzig on February 22, 1788. He traced his descent through both parents to Dutch ancestors. The family had settled at Dantzig in the course of commerce. For several generations the head of the family had combined the career of a merchant with landed pursuits. Schopenhauer's great-grandfather, Andreas Schopenhauer, leased one of the {16} large farms belonging to the municipality, while following the business of a merchant. His son Andreas acquired property near Dantzig, and there the father of the philosopher, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, was born. Some mental weakness seems to have been inherited. The eldest son of Andreas was an imbecile from his youth, and the other children, with the exception of Schopenhauer's father, all had some curious mental or moral twist. Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer, however, was a man of strong intelligence and character. He followed a merchant's career with great success, raising his firm to the first position in the town. He was a disciple of the school of Voltaire, read French and English literature, and had a keen admiration for English life and institutions. His wife, Johanna, belonged, too, to one of the leading families of Dantzig. She had been educated on broader lines than was usual for girls at the time, and had a love for art and letters which extended her interests beyond the domestic concerns of her home. Later on, during her widowhood, these were to find a wider field and opportunity, and she became a well-known authoress in the Germany of her day. She married in 1785, at the age of eighteen, being twenty years younger than her husband. The marriage was an unhappy one, owing to differences of temperament. There were two children of the marriage. They suffered for the incompatibilities of their parents. Both were burdened with abnormally strong desires for the pleasures of life, together with an extraordinary capacity for suffering.

Arthur, the future philosopher, was the first child of the marriage. He was given the name of Arthur to satisfy the cosmopolitanism of his father, the name being spelt alike in several languages. His earliest {17} years were spent at the country house near Dantzig, or at the farm, between the sea and the pine-woods, which had been rented many years before by his great-grandfather.

In 1793, when Schopenhauer was five years old, the family migrated to Hamburg. The "free city" of Dantzig, which had a constitution of its own, was annexed by Prussia in 1793, at the second partition of Poland, and Heinrich Schopenhauer was too stern a republican to adapt himself to the new rule. He carried on his business in Hamburg for the next twelve years, but never became a naturalised citizen.

He had resolved that his son should follow the family career of a merchant, and his education was planned accordingly on those lines. He was taken to France in 1797, and left at Havre for two years. For the next three years he attended a private school at Hamburg. During this time, discontent with his father's plans for his future was gradually ripening within him. To reconcile him, he was promised a trip to France and England, on the condition that he promised to give up his own desires and ambitions, and to be loyal to his father's wishes. The prospect of the journey was too alluring, and he gave the required promise. After six weeks had been spent in London, his parents left him at a boarding-school at Wimbledon. In letters to his mother, he complains of the mechanical instruction, the dreary Sunday services, and the tedious routine of the school. She, in reply, warns him not to give way to bombast and empty pathos.

He became proficient in English, and always held English character and intelligence in admiration, although he was impressed by the prevalent hypocrisy and the oppressive pietism of the time. He was busy {18} already recording his impressions, describing characteristically the feelings and ideas awakened in him rather than the actual facts and events. The travellers returned through France, from Geneva to Vienna, and thence to Berlin.

For about four months Schopenhauer now worked in a Dantzig office, trying to acquire the rudiments of a business training. When almost seventeen, he entered the employment of a firm in Hamburg. He himself has recorded that there never was a worse clerk in a merchant's office. In his leisure, and during office hours whenever possible, he was reading voraciously.

In 1805 his father died, whether by accident or by his own hand remains uncertain. For two years longer Schopenhauer stuck to his hated task, out of loyalty to his father, and the promise made him some years earlier. But at last he could stifle his ambitions and yearnings towards a purely intellectual life no longer, and he obtained his mother's consent to leave his office, and to begin preparation for a learned career.

His mother meanwhile, with her daughter Adèle, had left Hamburg and settled at Weimar, at that time the intellectual centre of Germany. Goethe was here the sun round which the lesser lights of the artistic and intellectual world revolved. At the age of forty, Johanna Schopenhauer had entered on a new life, and was finding scope and free development for untried capabilities. She played a prominent part in the social life of the place, and her receptions were remarkable for the circle she gathered round her. Goethe himself was a frequent visitor there. She also took part in the theatrical performances, which were so conspicuous a feature of the life at Weimar. With help and encouragement from Fernow, a distinguished scholar and {19} art critic, she began to write, and published with considerable popular success travel sketches, art biographies, and novels. Her daughter, in describing their life at Weimar, tells how her mother experienced ever fresh delight in intercourse with the famous men living there. "She was liked, her society was agreeable. Her pleasing manners made her house a centre of intellectual activity, where everyone felt at home, and freely contributed the best he had to bring." Besides Goethe, Schlegel, Grimm, Wieland and others were frequent guests under her roof. Freed from his hated bondage, Schopenhauer now left Hamburg and entered the gymnasium, or grammar school, at Gotha, but a lampoon on one of the masters was so resented that he was obliged to leave. He then came to Weimar, at his mother's suggestion, and worked at classics in the house of a well-known scholar, who had a real enthusiasm for all things Greek. Something of his spirit he communicated to his pupil, and the passion for Greek art and thought grew into a moulding principle in Schopenhauer's views of life and religion. At the same time that he was entering into the spirit of classical literature, he was cultivating his musical ability, and thus feeling his way towards a full and intense understanding of the art, which entered later with such significance into the development of his philosophy. He was striving to realise an ideal of the fullest and most complete culture, in which not only the life of thought, but also the life of art should find consummate satisfaction.

The estrangement between his mother and himself began to widen now that they were thrown constantly together. By arrangement, he dined daily with her, and came to her receptions. But Schopenhauer was {20} too uncontrolled in his temper, and too uncompromising in his egoism to make an agreeable companion. His mother, driven to write to him, asserts that his constant grumbling, gloomy looks, and intolerant dogmatism depress her. It is necessary to her happiness to know that he is happy, but not necessary that she should be a witness to it. Therefore, if they are to agree they must consent to live apart. Both mother and son were bent on self-development, and in character were too dissimilar to understand each other. Schopenhauer was jealous, uncontrolled in his moods, and boorish in his manners. That all-consuming egoism, which all his life spoiled his relations with everyone with whom he came in contact, made a congenial family life impossible. He resented his mother's freedom and independence, and insulted her friends. In a way that is very characteristic of him, he generalises from his own personal experience, and in his views on women we find reflected all the bitterness which had grown round the relations between himself and his mother.

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