THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

SCHOPENHAUER 25$
VIII. CRITICISM
The natural response to such a philosophy is a medical diagnosis, of
the age and of the man.
Let us realize again that we have here a phenomenon akin to thai
which, in the days after Alexander and after Caesar, brought
first to
Greece and then to Rome a flood of Oriental faiths and attitudes. It is
characteristic of the East to see the external Will in nature as sc much
more powerful than the will in man, and to come readily to a doctrine or
resignation and despair. As the decay of Greece brought the pallor c'i
Stoicism and the hectic flush of Epicureanism upon the cheeks of Hellas,
so the chaos of the Napoleonic wars brought into the soul of Europe that
plaintive weariness which made Schopenhauer its philosophic voice.
Europe had a terrible headache in i8i5. 155
The personal diagnosis can take its lead from Schopenhauer's admis-
sion that a man's happiness depends on what he is, rather than on external
circumstance. Pessimism is an indictment of the pessimist. Given a dis-
eased constitution and a neurotic mind, a life of empty leisure and gloomy
ennui, and there emerges the proper physiology for Schopenhauer's
philosophy. One must have leisure to be a pessimist; an active life almost
always brings good spirits in body and in mind. Schopenhauer admires
the serenity that comes of modest aims and a steady life, 156 but he could
hardly speak of these from personal experience. Difficilis in otio quits,
truly; he had money enough for continuous leisure, and he found continuous
leisure to be more intolerable than continuous work. Perhaps the
tendency of philosophers toward melancholy
is due to the unnaturalness
of sedentary occupations; too often an attack upon life is merely a symptom
of the lost art of excretion.
Nirvana is the ideal of a listless man, a Childe Harold or a Rene, wu^
has begun by desiring too much, by staking all on one passion, and then,
having lost, spends the remainder of his life in a passionless and petulant
boredom. If intellect arises as the servant of will, it is quite likely that the
particular product of the intellect which we know as the philosophy of
Schopenhauer was the cover and apology of a diseased and indolent will.
And no doubt his early experiences with women and with men developed
an abnormal suspiciousness and sensitivity, as it did in Stendhal and
Flaubert and Nietzsche. He became cynical and solitary. He writes: "A
157
friend in need is not a friend indeed; he is merely a borrower" ; and,
"Do not tell a friend anything that you would conceal from an enemy." 158
^Compare the apathy and despondency of Europe today (1924)* and the popularity
of such books as Spengler's Downfall of the Western World*
"% 422-
"""Counsels and Maxims," p. 86. mlbid.t p. J>6.