Essays of Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer: "Madame Schopenhauer," he writes, "a rich widow. Makes
profession of erudition. Authoress. Prattles much and well,
intelligently; without heart and soul. Self-complacent, eager after
approbation, and constantly smiling to herself. God preserve us from
women whose mind has shot up into mere intellect."
Schopenhauer meanwhile was working out his philosophical system, the
idea of his principal philosophical work. "Under my hands," he wrote in
1813, "and still more in my mind grows a work, a philosophy which will
be an ethics and a metaphysics in one:--two branches which hitherto have
been separated as falsely as man has been divided into soul and body.
The work grows, slowly and gradually aggregating its parts like the
child in the womb. I became aware of one member, one vessel, one part
after another. In other words, I set each sentence down without anxiety
as to how it will fit into the whole; for I know it has all sprung from
a single foundation. It is thus that an organic whole originates, and
that alone will live.... Chance, thou ruler of this sense-world! Let me
live and find peace for yet a few years, for I love my work as the
mother her child. When it is matured and has come to birth, then exact
from me thy duties, taking interest for the postponement. But, if I sink
before the time in this iron age, then grant that these miniature
beginnings, these studies of mine, be given to the world as they are and
for what they are: some day perchance will arise a kindred spirit, who
can frame the members together and 'restore' the fragment of
antiquity."[1]
By March 1817 he had completed the preparatory work of his system, and
began to put the whole thing together; a year later _Die Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung: vier Bücher, nebst einem Anhange, der die Kritik der
Kantischen Philosophie enthält_ ("The World as Will and Idea; four
books, with an appendix containing a criticism on the philosophy of
Kant"). Some delay occurring in the publication, Schopenhauer wrote one
of his characteristically abusive letters to Brockhaus, his publisher,
who retorted "that he must decline all further correspondence with one
whose letters, in their divine coarseness and rusticity, savoured more
of the cabman than of the philosopher," and concluded with a hope that
his fears that the work he was printing would be good for nothing but
waste paper, might not be realised.[2] The work appeared about the end
of December 1818 with 1819 on the title-page. Schopenhauer had meanwhile
proceeded in September to Italy, where he revised the final proofs. So
far as the reception of the work was concerned there was reason to
believe that the fears of Brockhaus would be realised, as, in fact, they
came practically to be. But in the face of this general want of
appreciation, Schopenhauer had some crumbs of consolation. His sister
wrote to him in March (he was then staying at Naples) that Goethe "had
received it with great joy, immediately cut the thick book, and began
_instantly_ to read it. An hour later he sent me a note to say that he
thanked you very much and thought that the whole book was good. He
pointed out the most important passages, read them to us, and was
greatly delighted.... You are the only author whom Goethe has ever read
seriously, it seems to me, and I rejoice." Nevertheless the book did not
sell. Sixteen years later Brockhaus informed Schopenhauer that a large
number of copies had been sold at waste paper price, and that he had
even then a few in stock. Still, during the years 1842-43, Schopenhauer
was contemplating the issue of a second edition and making revisions for
that purpose; when he had completed the work he took it to Brockhaus,
and agreed to leave the question of remuneration open. In the following
year the second edition was issued (500 copies of the first volume, and
750 of the second), and for this the author was to receive no
remuneration. "Not to my contemporaries," says Schopenhauer with fine
conviction in his preface to this edition, "not to my compatriots--to
mankind I commit my now completed work, in the confidence that it will
not be without value for them, even if this should be late recognised,
as is commonly the lot of what is good. For it cannot have been for the
passing generation, engrossed with the delusion of the moment, that my
mind, almost against my will, has uninterruptedly stuck to its work
through the course of a long life. And while the lapse of time has not
been able to make me doubt the worth of my work, neither has the lack of
sympathy; for I constantly saw the false and the bad, and finally the
absurd and senseless, stand in universal admiration and honour, and I
bethought myself that if it were not the case, those who are capable of
recognising the genuine and right are so rare that we may look for them
in vain for some twenty years, then those who are capable of producing
it could not be so few that their works afterwards form an exception to
the perishableness of earthly things; and thus would be lost the
reviving prospect of posterity which every one who sets before himself a
high aim requires to strengthen him."[3]
When Schopenhauer started for Italy Goethe had provided him with a
letter of introduction to Lord Byron, who was then staying at Venice,
but Schopenhauer never made use of the letter; he said that he hadn't
the courage to present himself. "Do you know," he says in a letter,
"three great pessimists were in Italy at the same time--Byron, Leopardi,
and myself! And yet not one of us has made the acquaintance of the
other." He remained in Italy until June 1819, when he proceeded to
Milan, where he received distressing news from his sister to the effect
that a Dantzic firm, in which she and her mother had invested all their
capital, and in which he himself had invested a little, had become
bankrupt. Schopenhauer immediately proposed to share his own income with
them. But later, when the defaulting firm offered to its creditors a
composition of thirty per cent, Schopenhauer would accept nothing less
than seventy per cent in the case of immediate payment, or the whole if
the payment were deferred; and he was so indignant at his mother and
sister falling in with the arrangement of the debtors, that he did not
correspond with them again for eleven years. With reference to this
affair he wrote: "I can imagine that from your point of view my
behaviour may seem hard and unfair. That is a mere illusion which
disappears as soon as you reflect that all I want is merely not to have
taken from me what is most rightly and incontestably mine, what,
moreover, my whole happiness, my freedom, my learned leisure depend
upon;--a blessing which in this world people like me enjoy so rarely
that it would be almost as unconscientious as cowardly not to defend it
to the uttermost and maintain it by every exertion. You say, perhaps,
that if all your creditors were of this way of thinking, I too should
come badly off. But if all men thought as I do, there would be much more
thinking done, and in that case probably there would be neither
bankruptcies, nor wars, nor gaming tables."[4]
In July 1819, when he was at Heidelberg, the idea occurred to him of
turning university lecturer, and took practical shape the following
summer, when he delivered a course of lectures on philosophy at the
Berlin University. But the experiment was not a success; the course was
not completed through the want of attendance, while Hegel at the same
time and place was lecturing to a crowded and enthusiastic audience.
This failure embittered him, and during the next few years there is
little of any moment in his life to record. There was one incident,
however, to which his detractors would seem to have attached more
importance than it was worth, but which must have been sufficiently
disturbing to Schopenhauer--we refer to the Marquet affair. It appears
on his returning home one day he found three women gossiping outside his
door, one of whom was a seamstress who occupied another room in the
house. Their presence irritated Schopenhauer (whose sensitiveness in
such matters may be estimated from his essay "On Noise"), who, finding
them occupying the same position on another occasion, requested them to
go away, but the seamstress replied that she was an honest person and
refused to move. Schopenhauer disappeared into his apartments and
returned with a stick. According to his own account, he offered his arm
to the woman in order to take her out; but she would not accept it, and
remained where she was. He then threatened to put her out, and carried
his threat into execution by seizing her round the waist and putting her
out. She screamed, and attempted to return. Schopenhauer now pushed her
out; the woman fell, and raised the whole house. This woman, Caroline
Luise Marquet, brought an action against him for damages, alleging that
he had kicked and beaten her. Schopenhauer defended his own case, with
the result that the action was dismissed. The woman appealed, and
Schopenhauer, who was contemplating going to Switzerland, did not alter
his plans, so that the appeal was heard during his absence, the judgment
reversed, and he was mulcted in a fine of twenty thalers. But the
unfortunate business did not end here. Schopenhauer proceeded from
Switzerland to Italy, and did not return to Berlin until May 1825.
Caroline Marquet renewed her complaints before the courts, stating that
his ill-usage had occasioned a fever through which she had lost the
power of one of her arms, that her whole system was entirely shaken, and
demanding a monthly allowance as compensation. She won her case; the
defendant had to pay three hundred thalers in costs and contribute sixty
thalers a year to her maintenance while she lived. Schopenhauer on
returning to Berlin did what he could to get the judgment reversed, but
unsuccessfully. The woman lived for twenty years; he inscribed on her
death certificate, "_Obit anus, obit onus"_
The idea of marriage seems to have more or less possessed Schopenhauer
about this time, but he could not finally determine to take the step.
There is sufficient to show in the following essays in what light he
regarded women. Marriage was a debt, he said, contracted in youth and
paid off in old age. Married people have the whole burden of life to
bear, while the unmarried have only half, was a characteristically
selfish apothegm. Had not all the true philosophers been
celibates--Descartes, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Kant? The
classic writers were of course not to be considered, because with them
woman occupied a subordinate position. Had not all the great poets
married, and with disastrous consequences? Plainly, Schopenhauer was not
the person to sacrifice the individual to the will of the species.
In August 1831 he made a fortuitous expedition to
Frankfort-on-the-Main--an expedition partly prompted by the outbreak of
cholera at Berlin at the time, and partly by the portent of a dream (he
was credulous in such matters) which at the beginning of the year had
intimated his death. Here, however, he practically remained until his
death, leading a quiet, mechanically regular life and devoting his
thoughts to the development of his philosophic ideas, isolated at first,
but as time went on enjoying somewhat greedily the success which had
been denied him in his earlier days. In February 1839 he had a moment of
elation when he heard from the Scientific Society of Drontheim that he
had won the prize for the best essay on the question, "Whether free will
could be proved from the evidence of consciousness," and that he had
been elected a member of the Society; and a corresponding moment of
despondency when he was informed by the Royal Danish Academy of the