THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

232
THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
after leaving Weimar. He had hoped for a chance to present ris philos*
ophy at one of the great universities of Germany; the chance came in
1822, \vhen he was invited to Berlin as privat-docext. Ke deliberately
chose for his lectures the very hours at which the iheri mighty Hegel
was scheduled to teacli; Schopenhauer trusted that the students would
view him and He.sei wilh the eyes of posterity. But the students could
not so far anticipate, and Schopenhauer fcund himself talking to empty
seats. He resigned, and revenged hi:.:itlf by those bitter diatribes against
Hegel which i;:ar the lat'.-r editions cf his ckef-d'&uzre. In 1831 a cholera
epidemic broke out in Berlin; both Hegel and Schopenhauer fled; but
Hegel returned prematurely, caught the infection, and died in a few days.
Schopenhauer never stopped until he reached Frankfort, where he spent
the remainder of liis sc, verity-two years.
Like a sensible pe-i:;;:st, he had avoided that pitfall of optimists
the attempt to make a living with the pen. He had inherited an interest
in his father's firm, r^d lived in receipt comfort on the revenue which ihis
brought him. He invested his money with a wisdom unbecoming a
philosopher. V/hen. a ccr.:ps,ny in which he had taken shares failed, and
the ether crcdi'.crs ^crre?d to a 70' c settlement, Schopenhauer fought
for full pz?t n:ni, ar.d v/o::. H? had enough to tngage
tvvo rooms ii? a
boarding-hou^e : there he lived the la.? t thirty years of his life, with no
commde but a do^. He called the l:t:h poodle Atma (the Brahmins' term
for the World-Soul), but the v;z.'& cf ths town called it "Young Schopen-
hauer," He ate his dinners, usually, at the Englischer Hof. At the beginning
of each meal he would put a gold coin upon the table before him;
and at the end of each meal he would put the coin back into his pocket.
It was, no doubt, an indignant waiter \vLo at last asked him the meaning
of this invariable ceremony. Schopenhauer answered that it was his silent
wager to drop the coin into the poor-box on the first day that the English
officers dining there should talk of anything else than horses, women, or
dogs. 10
The universities ignored him and his books, as if to substantiate his
claim that all advances in philosophy are made outside of academic walls.
"Nothing," says Nietzsche, "so offended the German savants as Schopenhauer's
unlikeness to them." But he had learned some patience; he was
confident that, however belated, recognition would come. And at last,
slowly, it came. Men of the middle classes lawyers, physicians, merchants
found in him a philosopher who offered them no mere pretentious
jargon of metaphysical unrealities, but an intelligible survey of the
phenomena of actual life. A Europe disillusioned with the ideals and
efforts of 1848 turned almost with acclamation to this philosophy that had
voiced the despair of 1815. The attack of science upon theology, the
socialist indictment of poverty and war, the biological stress on the
^Wallace, 171.