No More Learning

Where
has vanished all the reflection on moral questions
that has occupied every great developed society at
all epochs? " There is no fame for that now, and
there are none to reflect: we are really drawing on
the inherited moral capital which our predecessors
accumulated for us, and which we do not know
how to increase, but only to squander. Such things
are either not mentioned in our society, or, if at all,
with a naYve want of personal experience that
makes one disgusted. It comes to this, that our
schools and professors simply turn aside from any
moral instruction or content themselves with
formulae; virtue is a word and nothing more, on
both sides, an old-fashioned word that they laugh
at—and it is worse when they do not laugh, for
then they are hypocrites.
An explanation of this faint-heartedness and
ebbing of all moral strength would be difficult and
complex: but whoever is considering the influence
of Christianity in its hour of victory on the
morality of the mediaeval world, must not forget
that it reacts also in its defeat, which is apparently
its position to-day. By its lofty ideal, Christianity
has outbidden the ancient Systems of Ethics and
their invariable naturalism, with which men came
to feel a dull disgust: and afterwards when they
did reach the knowledge of what was better and
higher, they found they had no longer the power,
for all their desire, to return to its embodiment in
the antique virtues. And so the life of the modern
man is passed in see-sawing between Christianity


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 113
and Paganism, between a furtive or hypocritical
approach to Christian morality, and an equally shy
and spiritless dallying with the antique: and he
does not thrive under it. His inherited fear of
naturalism, and its more recent attraction for him,
his desire to come to rest somewhere, while in the
impotence of his intellect he swings backwards and
forwards between the "good" and the "better"
course—all this argues an instability in the modern
mind that condemns it to be without joy or fruit.
Never were moral teachers more necessary and never
were they more unlikely to be found: physicians
are most in danger themselves in times when they
are most needed and many men are sick. For
where are our modern physicians who are strong
and sure-footed enough to hold up another or lead
him by the hand? There lies a certain heavy
gloom on the best men of our time, an eternal
loathing for the battle that is fought in their hearts
between honesty and lies, a wavering of trust in
themselves, which makes them quite incapable of
showing to others the way they must go.
So I was right in speaking of my " wandering in
a world of wishes" when I dreamt of finding a
true philosopher who could lift me from the slough
of insufficiency, and teach me again simply and
honestly to be in my thoughts and life, in the
deepest sense of the word, "out of season"; simply
and honestly—for men have now become such
complicated machines that they must be dishonest,
if they speak at all, or wish to act on their words.
With such needs and desires within me did I
come to know Schopenhauer.
VOL. II. H


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114 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
I belong to those readers of Schopenhauer who
know perfectly well, after they have turned the
first page, that they will read all the others, and
listen to every word that he has spoken. My trust
in him sprang to life at once, and has been the same
for nine years. I understood him as though he
had written for me (this is the most intelligible,
though a rather foolish and conceited way of
expressing it). Hence I never found a paradox
in him, though occasionally some small errors:
for paradoxes are only assertions that carry no
conviction, because the author has made them
himself without any conviction, wishing to appear
brilliant, or to mislead, or, above all, to pose.
Schopenhauer never poses: he writes for himself,
and no one likes to be deceived—least of all a
philosopher who has set this up as his law:
"deceive nobody, not even thyself," neither with
the "white lies" of all social intercourse, which
writers almost unconsciously imitate, still less
with the more conscious deceits of the platform,
and the artificial methods of rhetoric. Schopen-
hauer's speeches are to himself alone; or if you
like to imagine an auditor, let it be a son whom
the father is instructing. It is a rough, honest,
good-humoured talk to one who "hears and loves. "
Such writers are rare. His strength and sanity
surround us at the first sound of his voice: it is
like entering the heights of the forest, where we
\x breathe deep and are well again. We feel a
for bracing air everywhere, a certain candour and
the ;aturalness of his own, that belongs to men who
man il at home with themselves, and masters of a


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 115
very rich home indeed: he is quite different from
the writers who are surprised at themselves if they
have said something intelligent, and whose pro-
nouncements for that reason have something
nervous and unnatural about them. We are just
as little reminded in Schopenhauer of the pro-
fessor with his stiff joints worse for want of
exercise, his narrow chest and scraggy figure, his
slinking or strutting gait. And again his rough
and rather grim soul leads us not so much to
miss as to despise the suppleness and courtly
grace of the excellent Frenchmen; and no one
will find in him the gilded imitations of pseudo-
gallicism that our German writers prize so highly.
His style in places reminds me a little of Goethe,
but is not otherwise on any German model. For
he knows how to be profound with simplicity,
striking without rhetoric, and severely logical
without pedantry: and of what German could he
have learnt that? He also keeps free from the
hair-splitting, jerky and (with all respect) rather
un-German manner of Lessing: no small merit
in him, for Lessing is the most tempting of all
models for prose style. The highest praise I can
give his manner of presentation is to apply his
own phrase to himself:—"A philosopher must be
very honest to avail himself of no aid from poetry
or rhetoric. " That honesty is something, and even
a virtue, is one of those private opinions which are
forbidden in this age of public opinion; and so I
shall not be praising Schopenhauer, but only giving
him a distinguishing mark, when I repeat that he
is honest, even as a writer: so few of them are,


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Il6 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
that we are apt to mistrust every one who writes
at all. I only know a single author that I can
rank with Schopenhauer, or even above him, in
the matter of honesty; and that is Montaigne.
The joy of living on this earth is increased by the
existence of such a man. The effect on myself,
at any rate, since my first acquaintance with that
strong and masterful spirit, has been, that I can
say of him as he of Plutarch—" As soon as I open
him, I seem to grow a pair of wings. " If I had
the task of making myself at home on the earth,
I would choose him as my companion.
Schopenhauer has a second characteristic in
common with Montaigne, besides honesty; a joy
that really makes others joyful. "Aliis laetus,
sibi sapiens. " There are two very different kinds
of joyfulness. The true thinker always communi-
cates joy and life, whether he is showing his serious
or comic side, his human insight or his godlike
forbearance: without surly looks or trembling
hands or watery eyes, but simply and truly, with
fearlessness and strength, a little cavalierly perhaps,
and sternly, but always as a conqueror: and it is
this that brings the deepest and intensest joy, to
see the conquering god with all the monsters that
he has fought. But the joyfulness one finds here
and there in the mediocre writers and limited
thinkers makes some of us miserable; I felt this,
for example, with the "joyfulness " of David Strauss.
We are generally ashamed of such a quality in our
contemporaries, because they show the nakedness
of our time, and of the men in it, to posterity.
Such fils de joie do not see the sufferings and


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 117
the monsters, that they pretend, as philosophers,
to see and fight; and so their joy deceives us, and
we hate it; it tempts to the false belief that they
have gained some victory. At bottom there is
only joy where there is victory: and this applies
to true philosophy as much as to any work of art.
The contents may be forbidding and serious, as
the problem of existence always is; the work will
only prove tiresome and oppressive, if the slipshod
thinker and the dilettante have spread the mist of
their insufficiency over it: while nothing happier
or better can come to man's lot than to be near
one of those conquering spirits whose profound
thought has made them love what is most vital,
and whose wisdom has found its goal in beauty.
They really speak: they are no stammerers or
babblers; they live and move, and have no part
in the danse macabre of the rest of humanity.
And so in their company one feels a natural man
again, and could cry out with Goethe—" What a
wondrous and priceless thing is a living creature!
How fitted to his surroundings, how true, and
real! "
I have been describing nothing but the first,
almost physiological, impression made upon me
by Schopenhauer, the magical emanation of inner
force from one plant of Nature to another, that
follows the slightest contact Analysing it, I find
that this influence of Schopenhauer has three
elements, his honesty, his joy, and his consistency.
He is honest, as speaking and writing for himself
alone; joyful, because his thought has conquered
the greatest difficulties; consistent, because he


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Il8 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
cannot help being so. His strength rises like a
flame in the calm air, straight up, without a
tremor or deviation. He finds his way, without
our noticing that he has been seeking it: so surely
and cleverly and inevitably does he run his course,
as if by some law of gravitation. If any one have
felt what it means to find, in our present world of
Centaurs and Chimaeras, a single-hearted and un-
affected child of nature who moves unconstrained
on his own road, he will understand my joy and
surprise in discovering Schopenhauer: I knew in
him the educator and philosopher I had so long
desired. Only, however, in his writings: which
was a great loss. All the more did I exert myself
to see behind the book the living man whose
testament it was, and who promised his inheritance
to such as could, and would, be more than his
readers—his pupils and his sons.
III.
I get profit from a philosopher, just so far as he
can be an example to me. There is no doubt that
a man can draw whole nations after him by his
example; as is shown by Indian history, which is
practically the history of Indian philosophy. But
this example must exist in his outward life, not
merely in his books; it must follow the way of the
Grecian philosophers, whose doctrine was in their
dress and bearing and general manner of life rather
than in their speech or writing. We have nothing
yet of this " breathing testimony " in German philo-


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. Iig
sophical life; the spirit has, apparently, long com-
pleted its emancipation, while the flesh has hardly
begun; yet it is foolish to think that the spirit can
be really free and independent when this victory
over limitation—which is ultimately a formative
limiting of one's self—is not embodied anew in
every look and movement. Kant held to his
university, submitted to its regulations, and be-
longed, as his colleagues and students thought, to
a definite religious faith: and naturally his example
has produced, above all, University professors of
philosophy. Schopenhauer makes small account
of the learned tribe, keeps himself exclusive, and
cultivates an independence from state and society
as his ideal, to escape the chains of circumstance
here: that is his value to us. Many steps in the
enfranchisement of the philosopher are unknown
in Germany; they cannot always remain so. Our
artists live more bravely and honourably than our
philosophers; and Richard Wagner, the best
example of all, shows how genius need not fear a
fight to the death with the established forms and
ordinances, if we wish to bring the higher truth
and order, that lives in him, to the light. The
"truth," however, of which we hear so much from
our professors, seems to be a far more modest
being, and no kind of disturbance is to be feared
from her; she is an easy-going and pleasant
creature, who is continually assuring the powers
that be that no one need fear any trouble from
her quarter: for man is only "pure reason. " And
therefore I will say, that philosophy in Germany
has more and more to learn not to be "pure


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120 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
reason": and it may well take as its model
"Schopenhauer the man. "
It is no less than a marvel that he should have
come to be this human kind of example: for he
was beset, within and without, by the most frightful
dangers, that would have crushed and broken a
weaker nature. I think there was a strong likeli-
hood of Schopenhauer the man going under, and
leaving at best a residue of "pure reason": and
only "at best"—it was more probable that neither
man nor reason would survive.
A modern Englishman sketches the most usual
danger to extraordinary men who live in a society
that worships the ordinary, in this manner:—" Such
uncommon characters are first cowed, then become
sick and melancholy, and then die. A Shelley
could never have lived in England: a race of
Shelleys would have been impossible. " Our
Holderins and Kleists were undone by their un-
conventionality, and were not strong enough for
the climate of the so-called German culture; and
only iron natures like Beethoven, Goethe, Schopen-
hauer and Wagner could hold out against it. Even
in them the effect of this weary toiling and moil-
ing is seen in many lines and wrinkles; their
breathing is harder and their voice is forced. The
old diplomatist who had only just seen and spoken
to Goethe, said to a friend—" Voila un homme qui
a eu de grands chagrins ! " which Goethe translated
to mean "That is a man who has taken great pains
in his life. " And he adds, "If the trace of the
sorrow and activity we have gone through cannot
be wiped from our features, it is no wonder that


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 121
all that survives of us and our struggles should
bear the same impress. " And thie is the Goethe
to whom our cultured Philistines point as the
happiest of Germans, that they may prove their
thesis, that it must be possible to be happy among
them—with the unexpressed corollary that no one
can be pardoned for feeling unhappy and lonely
among them. Hence they push their doctrine, in
practice, to its merciless conclusion, that there is
always a secret guilt in isolation. Poor Schopen-
hauer had this secret guilt too in his heart, the
guilt of cherishing his philosophy more than his
fellow-men; and he was so unhappy as to have
learnt from Goethe that he must defend his philo-
sophy at all costs from the neglect of his contem-
poraries, to save its very existence: for there is a
kind of Grand Inquisitor's Censure in which the
Germans, according to Goethe, are great adepts:
it is called—inviolable silence. This much at least
was accomplished by it;—the greater part of the
first edition of Schopenhauer's masterpiece had to
be turned into waste paper. The imminent risk that
his great work would be undone, merely by neglect,
bred in him a state of unrest—perilous and uncon-
trollable;—for no single adherent of any note
presented himself. It is tragic to watch his search
for any evidence of recognition: and his piercing
cry of triumph at last, that he would now really be
read {legor et legar), touches us with a thrill of
pain. All the traits in which we do not see the
great philosopher show us the suffering man,
anxious for his noblest possessions; he was tortured
by the fear of losing his little property, and perhaps


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122 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
of no longer being able to maintain in its purity
his truly antique attitude towards philosophy. He
often chose falsely in his desire to find real trust
and compassion in men, only to return with a heavy
heart to his faithful dog again. He was absolutely
alone, with no single friend of his own kind to
comfort him; and between one and none there lies
an infinity—as ever between something and noth-
ing. No one who has true friends knows what
real loneliness means, though he may have the
whole world in antagonism round him. Ah, I see
well ye do not know what isolation is! Whenever
there are great societies with governments and
religions and public opinions—where there is a
tyranny, in short, there will the lonely philosopher
be hated: for philosophy offers an asylum to man-
kind where no tyranny can penetrate, the inner
sanctuary, the centre of the heart's labyrinth: and
the tyrants are galled at it. Here do the lonely
men lie hid: but here too lurks their greatest
danger. These men who have saved their inner
freedom, must also live and be seen in the outer
world: they stand in countless human relations by
their birth, position, education and country, their
own circumstances and the importunity of others:
and so they are presumed to hold an immense
number of opinions, simply because these happen
to prevail: every look that is not a denial counts
as an assent, every motion of the hand that does
not destroy is regarded as an aid. These free and
lonely men know that they perpetually seem other
than they are. While they wish for nothing but
>
truth and honesty, they are in a net of misunder-


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 123
standing; and that ardent desire cannot prevent
a mist of false opinions, of adaptations and wrong
conclusions, of partial misapprehension and in-
tentional reticence, from gathering round their
actions. And there settles a cloud of melancholy
on their brows: for such natures hate the necessity
of pretence worse than death: and the continual
bitterness gives them a threatening and volcanic
character. They take revenge from time to time
for their forced concealment and self-restraint:
they issue from their dens with lowering looks:
their words and deeds are explosive, and may lead
to their own destruction. Schopenhauer lived
amid dangers of this sort. Such lonely men need
love, and friends, to whom they can be as open and
sincere as to themselves, and in whose presence the
deadening silence and hypocrisy may cease. Take
their friends away, and there is left an increasing
peril; Heinrich von Kleist was broken by the lack
of love, and the most terrible weapon against
unusual men is to drive them into themselves;
and then their issuing forth again is a volcanic
eruption. Yet there are always some demi-gods
who can bear life under these fearful conditions
and can be their conquerors: and if you would hear
their lonely chant, listen to the music of Beet-
hoven.
So the first danger in whose shadow Schopen-
hauer lived was—isolation. The second is called
—doubting of the truth. To this every thinker is
liable who sets out from the philosophy of Kant,
provided he be strong and sincere in his sorrows
and his desires, and not a mere tinkling thought-


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122 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
of no longer being able to maintain in its purity
his truly antique attitude towards philosophy. He
often chose falsely in his desire to find real trust
and compassion in men, only to return with a heavy
heart to his faithful dog again. He was absolutely
alone, with no single friend of his own kind to
comfort him; and between one and none there lies
an infinity—as ever between something and noth-
ing. No one who has true friends knows what
real loneliness means, though he may have the
whole world in antagonism round him. Ah, I see
well ye do not know what isolation is! Whenever
there are great societies with governments and
religions and public opinions—where there is a
tyranny, in short, there will the lonely philosopher
be hated: for philosophy offers an asylum to man-
kind where no tyranny can penetrate, the inner
sanctuary, the centre of the heart's labyrinth: and
the tyrants are galled at it. Here do the lonely
men lie hid: but here too lurks their greatest
danger. These men who have saved their inner
freedom, must also live and be seen in the outer
world: they stand in countless human relations by
their birth, position, education and country, their
own circumstances and the importunity of others:
and so they are presumed to hold an immense
number of opinions, simply because these happen
to prevail: every look that is not a denial counts
as an assent, every motion of the hand that does
not destroy is regarded as an aid. These free and
lonely men know that they perpetually seem other
than they are. While they wish for nothing but
truth and honesty, they are in a net of misunder-


## p. 123 (#171) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 123
standing; and that ardent desire cannot prevent
a mist of false opinions, of adaptations and wrong
conclusions, of partial misapprehension and in-
tentional reticence, from gathering round their
actions. And there settles a cloud of melancholy
on their brows: for such natures hate the necessity
of pretence worse than death: and the continual
bitterness gives them a threatening and volcanic
character. They take revenge from time to time
for their forced concealment and self-restraint:
they issue from their dens with lowering looks:
their words and deeds are explosive, and may lead
to their own destruction. Schopenhauer lived
amid dangers of this sort. Such lonely men need
love, and friends, to whom they can be as open and
sincere as to themselves, and in whose presence the
deadening silence and hypocrisy may cease. Take
their friends away, and there is left an increasing
peril; Heinrich von Kleist was broken by the lack
of love, and the most terrible weapon against
unusual men is to drive them into themselves;
and then their issuing forth again is a volcanic
eruption. Yet there are always some demi-gods
who can bear life under these fearful conditions
and can be their conquerors: and if you would hear
their lonely chant, listen to the music of Beet-
hoven.
So the first danger in whose shadow Schopen-
hauer lived was—isolation. The second is called
—doubting of the truth. To this every thinker is
liable who sets out from the philosophy of Kant,
provided he be strong and sincere in his sorrows
and his desires, and not a mere tinkling thought-


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124 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
box or calculating machine. We all know the
shameful state of things implied by this last
reservation, and I believe it is only a very few men
that Kant has so vitally affected as to change the
current of their blood. To judge from what one
reads, there must have been a revolution in every
domain of thought since the work of this unob-
trusive professor: I cannot believe it myself. For
I see men, though darkly, as themselves needing
to be revolutionised, before any "domains of
thought" can be so. In fact, we find the first
mark of any influence Kant may have had on the
popular mind, in a corrosive scepticism and
relativity. But it is only in noble and active
spirits who could never rest in doubt that the
shattering despair of truth itself could take the
place of doubt. This was, for example, the effect
of the Kantian philosophy on Heinrich von Kleist.
"It was only a short time ago," he writes in his
poignant way, " that I became acquainted with the
Kantian philosophy; and I will tell you my
thought, though I cannot fear that it will rack you
to your inmost soul, as it did me. —We cannot
decide, whether what we call truth is really truth,
or whether it only seems so to us. If the latter,
the truth that we amass here does not exist after
death, and all our struggle to gain a possession
that may follow us even to the grave is in vain.
If the blade of this thought do not cut your heart,
yet laugh not at another who feels himself wounded
by it in his Holy of Holies. My one highest aim
has vanished, and I have no more. " Yes, when
will men feel again deeply as Kleist did, and learn


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 12$
to measure a philosophy by what it means to the
"Holy of Holies "? And yet we must make this
estimate of what Schopenhauer can mean to us,
after Kant, as the first pioneer to bring us from
the heights of sceptical disillusionment or " critical"
renunciation, to the greater height of tragic con-
templation, the nocturnal heaven with its endless
crown of stars. His greatness is that he can stand
opposite the picture of life, and interpret it to us
as a whole: while all the clever people cannot
escape the error of thinking one comes nearer to
the interpretation by a laborious analysis of the
colours and material of the picture; with the con-
fession, probably, that the texture of the canvas
is very complicated, and the chemical composition
of the colours undiscoverable. Schopenhauer knew
that one must guess the painter in order to under-
stand the picture. But now the whole learned
fraternity is engaged on understanding the colours
and canvas, and not the picture: and only he who
has kept the universal panorama of life and being
firmly before his eyes, will use the individual
sciences without harm to himself; for, without
this general view as a norm, they are threads that
lead nowhere and only confuse still more the maze
of our existence. Here we see, as I said, the
greatness of Schopenhauer, that he follows up
every idea, as Hamlet follows the Ghost, without
allowing himself to turn aside for a learned
digression, or be drawn away by the scholastic
abstractions of a rabid dialectic. The study of
the minute philosophers is only interesting for the
recognition that they have reached those stages


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126 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
in the great edifice of philosophy where learned
disquisitions for and against, where hair-splitting
objections and counter-objections are the rule:
and for that reason they evade the demand of
every great philosophy to speak sub specie
ceternitatis—"this is the picture of the whole of
life: learn thence the meaning of thine own life. "
And the converse: "read thine own life, and
understand thence the hieroglyphs of the universal
life. " In this way must Schopenhauer's philosophy
always be interpreted; as an individualist
philosophy, starting from the single man, in his
own nature, to gain an insight into his personal
miseries, and needs, and limitations, and find out
the remedies that will console them: namely, the
sacrifice of the ego, and its submission to the
nobler ends, especially those of justice and mercy.
He teaches us to distinguish between the true and
the apparent furtherance of man's happiness: how
neither the attainment of riches, nor honour, nor
learning, can raise the individual from his deep
despair at his unworthiness; and how the quest
for these good things can only have meaning
through a universal end that transcends and
explains them ;—the gaining of power to aid our
physical nature by them and, as far as may be,
correct its folly and awkwardness. For one's self
only, in the first instance: and finally, through
one's self, for all. It is a task that leads to scepti-
cism: for there is so much to be made better yet,
in one and all!
Applying this to Schopenhauer himself, we
come to the third and most intimate danger in


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 127
which he lived, and which lay deep in the marrow
of his being. Every one is apt to discover a
limitation in himself, in his gifts of intellect as well
as his moral will, that fills him with yearning and
melancholy; and as he strives after holiness
through a consciousness of sin, so, as an intellectual
being, he has a deep longing after the "genius"
in himself. This is the root of all true culture;
and if we say this means the aspiration of man to
be " born again " as saint and genius, I know that
one need not be a Buddhist to understand the
myth. We feel a strong loathing when we find
talent without such aspiration, in the circle of the
learned, or among the so-called educated; for we
see that such men, with all their cleverness, are no
aid but a hindrance to the beginnings of culture,
and the blossoming of genius, the aim of all
culture. There is a rigidity in them, parallel to
the cold arrogance of conventional virtue, which
also remains at the opposite pole to true holiness.
Schopenhauer's nature contained an extraordin-
arily dangerous dualism. Few thinkers have felt
as he did the complete and unmistakable certainty
of genius within them; and his genius made him
the highest of all promises,—that there could be no
deeper furrow than that which he was ploughing
in the ground of the modern world. He knew one
half of his being to be fulfilled according to its
strength, with no other need; and he followed
with greatness and dignity his vocation of con-
solidating his victory. In the other half there was
a gnawing aspiration, which we can understand,
when we hear that he turned away with a sad look


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126
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
in the great edifice of philosophy where learned
disquisitions for and against, where hair-splitting
objections and counter-objections are the rule :
and for that reason they evade the demand of
every great philosophy to speak sub specie
æternitatis—"this is the picture of the whole of
life: learn thence the meaning of thine own life. ”
And the converse: "read thine own life, and
understand thence the hieroglyphs of the universal
life. ” In this way must Schopenhauer's philosophy
always be interpreted; as an individualist
philosophy, starting from the single man, in his
own nature, to gain an insight into his personal
miseries, and needs, and limitations, and find out
the remedies that will console them: namely, the
sacrifice of the ego, and its submission to the
nobler ends, especially those of justice and mercy.
He teaches us to distinguish between the true and
the apparent furtherance of man's happiness: how
neither the attainment of riches, nor honour, nor
learning, can raise the individual from his deep
despair at his unworthiness; and how the quest
for these good things can only have meaning
through a universal end that transcends and
explains them ;-the gaining of power to aid our
physical nature by them and, as far as may be,
correct its folly and awkwardness. For one's self
only, in the first instance: and finally, through
one's self, for all. It is a task that leads to scepti-
cism : for there is so much to be made better yet,
in one and all!
Applying this to Schopenhauer himself, we
come to the third and most intimate danger in


## p. 127 (#177) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
127
which he lived, and which lay deep in the marrow
of his being. Every one is apt to discover a
limitation in himself, in his gifts of intellect as well
as his moral will, that fills him with yearning and
melancholy; and as he strives after holiness
through a consciousness of sin, so, as an intellectual
being, he has a deep longing after the “genius”
in himself. This is the root of all true culture;
and if we say this means the aspiration of man to
be “born again "as saint and genius, I know that
one need not be a Buddhist to understand the
myth. We feel a strong loathing when we find
talent without such aspiration, in the circle of the
learned, or among the so-called educated; for we
see that such men, with all their cleverness, are no
aid but a hindrance to the beginnings of culture,
and the blossoming of genius, the aim of all
culture. There is a rigidity in them, parallel to
the cold arrogance of conventional virtue, which
also remains at the opposite pole to true holiness.
Schopenhauer's nature contained an extraordin-
arily dangerous dualism. Few thinkers have felt
as he did the complete and unmistakable certainty
of genius within them; and his genius made him
the highest of all promises,—that there could be no
deeper furrow than that which he was ploughing
in the ground of the modern world.
He knew one
half of his being to be fulfilled according to its
strength, with no other need; and he followed
with greatness and dignity his vocation of con-
solidating his victory. In the other half there was
a gnawing aspiration, which we can understand,
when we hear that he turned away with a sad look


## p. 128 (#178) ############################################

128 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
from the picture of Rancd, the founder of the
Trappists, with the words: "That is a matter of
grace. " For genius evermore yearns after holiness
as it sees further and more clearly from its watch-
tower than other men, deep into the reconciliation
of Thought and Being, the kingdom of peace and
the denial of the will, and up to that other shore,
of which the Indians speak. The wonder is, that
Schopenhauer's nature should have been so incon-
ceivably stable and unshakable that it could
neither be destroyed nor petrified by this yearning.
Every one will understand this after the measure
of his own character and greatness: none of us will
understand it in the fulness of its meaning.
The more one considers these three dangers, the
more extraordinary will appear his vigour in
opposing them and his safety after the battle.
True, he gained many scars and open wounds:
and a cast of mind that may seem somewhat too
bitter and pugnacious. But his single ideal tran-
scends the highest humanity in him. Schopenhauer
stands as a pattern to men, in spite of all those
scars and scratches. We may even say, that what
was imperfect and "all too human " in him, brings
us nearer to him as a man, for we see a sufferer
and a kinsman to suffering, not merely a dweller
on the unattainable heights of genius.
These three constitutional dangers that threat-
ened Schopenhauer, threaten us all. Each one
of us bears a creative solitude within himself,
and his consciousness of it forms an exotic aura of
strangeness round him. Most men cannot endure
it, because they are slothful, as I said, and because


## p. 129 (#179) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 120
their solitude hangs round them a chain of troubles
and burdens. No doubt, for the man with this
heavy chain, life loses almost everything that one
desires from it in youth—joy, safety, honour: his
fellow-men pay him his due of—isolation! The
wilderness and the cave are about him, wherever
he may live. He must look to it that he be not
enslaved and oppressed, and become melancholy
thereby. And let him surround himself with the
pictures of good and brave fighters such as
Schopenhauer.
The second danger, too, is not rare. Here and
there we find one dowered by nature with a keen
vision; his thoughts dance gladly in the witches'
Sabbath of dialectic; and if he uncautiously give
his talent the rein, it is easy to lose all humanity
and live a ghostly life in the realm of "pure
reason": or through the constant search for the
"pros and cons" of things, he may go astray from
the truth and live without courage or confidence,
in doubt, denial and discontent, and the slender
hope that waits on disillusion: "No dog could live
long thus! "
The third danger is a moral or intellectual
hardening: man breaks the bond that united him
to his ideal: he ceases to be fruitful and reproduce
himself in this or that province, and becomes an
enemy or a parasite of culture. The solitude of
his being has become an indivisible, unrelated
atom, an icy stone. And one can perish of this
solitude as well as of the fear of it, of one's self as
well as one's self-sacrifice, of both aspiration and
petrifaction: and to live is ever to be in danger.
VOL. II. I


## p. 130 (#180) ############################################

130 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
Beside these dangers to which Schopenhauer
would have been constitutionally liable, in whatever
century he had lived, there were also some produced
by his own time; and it is essential to distinguish
between these two kinds, in order to grasp the
typical and formative elements in his nature. The
philosopher casts his eye over existence, and wishes
to give it a new standard value; for it has been
the peculiar task of all great thinkers to be law-
givers for the weight and stamp in the mint of
reality. And his task will be hindered if the men
he sees near him be a weakly and worm-eaten
growth. To be correct in his calculation of
existence, the unworthiness of the present time
must be a very small item in the addition. The
study of ancient or foreign history is valuable, if
at all, for a correct judgment on the whole destiny
of man; which must be drawn not only from an
average estimate but from a comparison of the
highest destinies that can befall individuals or
nations. The present is too much with us; it
directs the vision even against the philosopher's
will: and it will inevitably be reckoned too high
in the final sum. And so he must put a low figure
on his own time as against others, and suppress
the present in his picture of life, as well as in
himself; must put it into the background or paint
it over; a difficult, and almost impossible task.
The judgment of the ancient Greek philosophers
on the value of existence means so much more
than our own, because they had the full bloom of
life itself before them, and their vision was un-
troubled by any felt dualism between their wish


## p. 131 (#181) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 131
for freedom and beauty on the grand scale, and
their search after truth, with its single question
"What is the real worth of life? " Empedocles lived
when Greek culture was full to overflowing with
the joy of life, and all ages may take profit from
his words; especially as no other great philosopher
of that great time ventured to contradict them.
Empedocles is only the clearest voice among them
—they all say the same thing, if a man will but
open his ears. A modern thinker is always in the
throes of an unfulfilled desire; he is looking for
life,—warm, red life,—that he may pass judgment
on it: at any rate he will think it necessary to be
a living man himself, before he can believe in his
power of judging. And this is the title of the
modern philosophers to sit among the great aiders
of Life (or rather of the will to live), and the reason
why they can look from their own out-wearied
time and aspire to a truer culture, and a clearer
explanation. Their yearning is, however, their
danger; the reformer in them struggles with the
critical philosopher. And whichever way the
victory incline, it also implies a defeat. How was
Schopenhauer to escape this danger?
We like to consider the great man as the noble
child of his age, who feels its defects more strongly
and intimately than the smaller men: and therefore
the struggle of the great man against his age is
apparently nothing but a mad fight to the death
with himself. Only apparently, however: he only
fights the elements in his time that hinder his own
greatness, in other words his own freedom and
sincerity. And so, at bottom, he is only an enemy


## p. 132 (#182) ############################################

132 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
to that element which is not truly himself, the
irreconcilable antagonism of the temporal and
eternal in him. The supposed " child of his age"
proves to be but a step-child. From boyhood
Schopenhauer strove with his time, a false and
unworthy mother to him, and as soon as he had
banished her, he could bring back his being to its
native health and purity. For this very reason we
can use his writings as mirrors of his time; it is no
fault of the mirror if everything contemporary
appear in it stricken by a ravaging disease, pale
and thin, with tired looks and hollow eyes,—the
step-child's sorrow made visible. The yearning
for natural strength, for a healthy and simple
humanity, was a yearning for himself: and as soon
as he had conquered his time within him, he was
face to face with his own genius. The secret of
nature's being and his own lay open, the step-
mother's plot to conceal his genius from him was
foiled. And now he could turn a fearless eye
towards the question, "What is the real worth of
life? " without having any more to weigh a blood-
less and chaotic age of doubt and hypocrisy. He
knew that there was something higher and purer
to be won on this earth than the life of his time,
and a man does bitter wrong to existence who
only knows it and criticises it in this hateful form.
Genius, itself the highest product of life, is now
summoned to justify life, if it can: the noble
creative soul must answer the question :—" Dost
thou in thy heart say ' Yea! ' unto this existence?
Is it enough for thee? Wilt thou be its advocate
and its redeemer? One true 'Yea' from thy lips,


## p. 133 (#183) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 133
and the sorely accused life shall go free. " How
shall he answer? In the words of Empedocles.
IV.
The last hint may well remain obscure for a
time: I have something more easy to explain,
namely how Schopenhauer can help us to educate
ourselves in opposition to our age, since we have
the advantage of really knowing our age, through
him ;—if it be an advantage! It may be no longer
possible in a couple of hundred years. I some-
times amuse myself with the idea that men may
soon grow tired of books and their authors, and
the savant of to-morrow come to leave directions
in his will that his body be burned in the midst of
his books, including of course his own writings.
And in the gradual clearing of the forests, might
not our libraries be very reasonably used for straw
and brushwood? Most books are born from the
smoke and vapour of the brain: and to vapour and
smoke may they well return. For having no fire
within themselves, they shall be visited with fire.
And possibly to a later century our own may count
as the " Dark age," because our productions heated
the furnace hotter and more continuously than
ever before. We are anyhow happy that we can
learn to know our time; and if there be any sense
in busying ourselves with our time at all, we may
as well do it as thoroughly as we can, so that no
one may have any doubt about it. The possibility
of this we owe to Schopenhauer.


## p. 134 (#184) ############################################

134 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
Our happiness would of course be infinitely
greater, if our inquiry showed that nothing so
hopeful and splendid as our present epoch had
ever existed. There are simple people in some
corner of the earth to-day—perhaps in Germany—
who are disposed to believe in all seriousness that
the world was put right two years ago * and that
all stern and gloomy views of life are now con-
tradicted by "facts. " The foundation of the New
German Empire is, to them, the decisive blow that
annihilates all the "pessimistic" philosophisers,—
no doubt of it. To judge the philosopher's signifi-
cance in our time, as an educator, we must oppose
a widespread view like this, especially common in
our universities. We must say, it is a shameful
thing that such abominable flattery of the Time-
Fetish should be uttered by a herd of so-called
reflective and honourable men; it is a proof that
we no longer see how far the seriousness of
philosophy is removed from that of a newspaper.
Such men have lost the last remnant of feeling, not
only for philosophy, but also for religion, and have
put in its place a spirit not so much of optimism as
of journalism, the evil spirit that broods over the
day—and the daily paper. Every philosophy that
believes the problem of existence to be shelved,
or even solved, by a political event, is a sham
philosophy. There have been innumerable states
founded since the beginning of the world; that is
an old story. How should a political innovation
manage once and for all to make a contented race
* This was written in 1873. —Tr.


## p. 135 (#185) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 135
of the dwellers on this earth? If any one believe
in his heart that this is possible, he should report
himself to our authorities: he really deserves to be
Professor of Philosophy in a German university,
like Harms in Berlin, Jiirgen Meyer in Bonn, and
Carriere in Munich.
We are feeling the consequences of the doctrine,
preached lately from all the housetops, that the
state is the highest end of man and there is no
higher duty than to serve it: I regard this not a
relapse into paganism, but into stupidity. A man
who thinks state-service to be his highest duty,
very possibly knows no higher one; yet there are
both men and duties in a region beyond,—and one
of these duties, that seems to me at least of higher
value than state-service, is to destroy stupidity in
all its forms—and this particular stupidity among
them. And I have to do with a class of men
whose teleological conceptions extend further than
the well-being of a state, I mean with philosophers
—and only with them in their relation to the world
of culture, which is again almost independent of the
"good of the state. " Of the many links that make
up the twisted chain of humanity, some are of gold
and others of pewter.
How does the philosopher of our time regard
culture? Quite differently, I assure you, from the
professors who are so content with their new state.
He seems to see the symptoms of an absolute
uprooting of culture in the increasing rush and
hurry of life, and the decay of all reflection and
simplicity. The waters of religion are ebbing, and
leaving swamps or stagnant pools: the nations are


## p. 136 (#186) ############################################

136 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhauser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed! " For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-



## p. 137 (#187) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediaeval times


## p. 137 (#188) ############################################

136
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so .
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed ! ” For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-


## p. 137 (#189) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediæval times


## p. 137 (#190) ############################################

136
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed ! ” For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-


## p. 137 (#191) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediæval times


## p. 137 (#192) ############################################

136
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, “What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed ! ” For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way.