turned from the petty to the universal; when he becomes, as it were, a genius in respect of ethical insight; when he sees a thousand cases in one, so that life seen as one whole . . . moves him to resignation. . . A very noble character,” continues Schopenhauer, “we always conceive with a certain tinge of melancholy in it, — a melancholy that is anything but a continual peevishness in view of the daily vexations of life (for such peevishness is an ignoble trait, and arouses suspicions of maliciousness), but rather a melancholy that comes from an insight into the vanity of all joys, and the sorrowfubiess of all living, not alone of one’s own fortune.” Thus, as we see, Schopenhauer’s philosophy is not founded upon any summing up of the malicious judgments of his natural peevishness, but is an expression of a calm and relatively external survey and confession of his temperament in its wholeness. This it is that is expressed in the lucidity of his style, and that gives permanent value to his insight. The strong opposition between will and contemplation is one of the chief features of his doctrine.
As for this style in itself, it suggested Jean Paul’s famous characterization of the first edition of Schopenhauer’s “Welt als Wille und Vorstellung”: “A book of philosophical genius, bold, many-sided, full of skill and depth, — but of a depth often hopeless and bottomless, akin to that melancholy lake in Norway, in whose deep waters, beneath the steep rock-walls, one never sees the sun, but only the stars reflected; and no bird and no wave ever flies over its surface.” Just this calm of Schopenhauer’s intellect is the characteristic thing about his writing; and no one who knows the highly intellectual and reflective type of the nervously burdened genius will fail to comprehend the meaning of the contrast between the man’s peevishness, which tortured him, and his thinking, wherein he found rest. More cheerful spirits may think and will in the same moment, may reflect with vigorous
