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Says Schopenhauer: "Through love man shows that the species lies closer to him than the individual, and he lives more immediately in the former than in the latter. Why does the lover hang with complete abandon on the eyes of his chosen one, and is ready to make every sacrifice for her?
"Swarms of niggers on board delightful fat woman in blue calico with a sailor straw hat, and a pipe in her mouth. All of them perfectly happy, without a notion of morality piously given too psalm-singing, doing all they please without scruple, rarely married, for easiness of parting, looking as if they never knew a care .... Niggerdom perfect happiness. Schopenhauer should come here."
Body, movement, physiological processes, are all nothing more than the will, to speak with Fichte and Schopenhauer, or the idea, or the spirit itself, which appears thus to sensory beings. Other theories, some of them new, are also put forward. No Parallelism. For a long time it seemed as if the theory of parallelism was to gain general acceptance.
A later German writer, of whom I will speak in a moment or two, Schopenhauer, has some excellent remarks on Self-reflection, and on the difference between those who think for themselves and those who think for other people; between genuine Philosophers, who look at things first hand for their own sake, and Sophists, who look at words and books for the sake of making an appearance before the world, and seek their happiness in what they hope to get from others: he takes Herder for an example of the Sophist, and Lichtenberg for the true Philosopher.
He had taken his Aristotle with a high and noble seriousness; and in the same spirit he had approached his Kant, his Hegel and his Schopenhauer in succession. He was equipped with the most beautiful metaphysical theory of Art, and had himself written certain Prolegomena to Æsthetics. Metaphysics had preyed on Jewdwine like a flame. He was consumed with a passion for unity.
And the method of discovering the best qualities of style, and of forming a theory of writing, is not to follow some trick or mannerism that happens to please for the moment, but to study the way in which great authors have done their best work. It will be said that Schopenhauer tells us nothing we did not know before. Perhaps so; as he himself says, the best things are seldom new.
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."
He waved his hand near his face as if to scatter his thoughts. "Why did I rescue him when he was drowning. Ah! how humanity must suffer. If there was no joy, no real happiness on this earth, why live, why continue to endure all this. Schopenhauer was quite right when he said life was not worth living. Henceforth, he would be a pessimist. Three cheers for pessimism!
Written so as to be intelligible enough in themselves, the tendency of many of them is towards the fundamental idea on which his system is based. It may therefore be convenient to summarize that idea in a couple of sentences; more especially as Schopenhauer sometimes writes as if his advice had been followed and his readers were acquainted with the whole of his work.
Several men and women have been sentenced to severe penalties for exercising the right of free speech, which, in the land of Goethe, Heine, Strauss, and Schopenhauer, is still confined to professed Christians. The Reformation, in fact, was a superficial movement. Except for its moral revolt against the sale of indulgences, it touched no deep and durable principle.
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