THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SCHOPENHAUER 235
first. The world took a generation to discover Schopenhauer because he
put his worst foot forward, and hid his own thought behind a twohundred-page
barrier of second-hand idealism.19
The most vital part of the first section is an attack on materialism*
How can we explain mind as matter, when we know matter only through
mind?
If we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached
its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguish-
able laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all
at once become aware that its fatal result knowledge which it had
reached so laboriously, was presupposed as the indispensable condition of
its very starting-point. Mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought
matter, we really thought only the subject that perceives matter: the eye
that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it. Thus
the tremendous petitio principii reveals itself unexpectedly; for suddenly
the last link is seen to be the starting-point, the chain of a circle; and the
materialist is like Baron Miinchausen, who, when swimming on horseback,
drew the horse into the air with his legs, and himself by his queue.- . . .
The crude materialism which even now, in the middle of the nineteenth
century, 21 has been served up again under the ignorant delusion that it is
original, . . . stupidity denies vital force, and first of all tries to explain
the phenomena of life from physical and chemical forces, and those again
from the mechanical effects of matter. 22 , . . But I will never believe that
even the simplest chemical combination will ever admit of mechanical
explanation; much less the properties of light, heat, and electricity. These
will always require a dynamical explanation. 28
No: it is impossible to solve the metaphysical puzzle, to discover ths
secret essence of reality, by examining matter first, and then proceeding
to examine thought: we must begin with that which we know directly
and intimately ourselves. "We can never arrive at the real nature of
things from without. However much we may investigate, we can never
reach anything but images and names. We are like a man who goes round
a castle seeking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the
facades." 2* Let us enter within* If we can ferret out the ultimate nature of
our own minds we shall perhaps have the key to the external world.
"Instead of recommending books about Schopenhauer it would be better to send
the reader to Schopenhauer himself: all three volumes of his main work (with the
exception of Part I in each volume) are easy reading, and full of matter; and all
the Essays are valuable and delightful. By way of biography Wallace's Life should
suffice. In this essay it has been thought desirable to condense Schopenhauer's
immense volumes not by rephrasing their ideas, but by selecting and coordinating
the salient passages, and leaving the thought in the philosopher's own dear and
brilliant language. The reader mil have the benefit of getting Schopenhauer at first
hand, however briefly.
a
*% 34-
Vogt^ Buchner, Moleschott, Feuerbach, etc.
, 43. *I,i*8.