dividual." 1 In painting animals the most characteristic is accounted the most beautiful, because it best reveals the species. A work of art is successful, then, in proportion as it suggests the Platonic Idea, or universal, of the group to which the represented object belongs. The portrait of a man must aim, therefore, not at photographic fidelity, but at exposing, as far as possible, through one figure, some essential or universal quality of man. Art is greater than science because the latter proceeds by laborious accumulation and cautious reasoning, while the former reaches its goal at once by intuition and presentation; science can get along with talent, but art requires genius.

99 2

Our pleasure in nature, as in poetry or painting, is derived from contemplation of the object without admixture of personal will. To the artist the Rhine is a varied series of bewitching views, stirring the senses and the imagination with suggestions of beauty; but the traveler who is bent on his personal affairs "will see the Rhine and its banks only as a line, and the bridges only as lines cutting the first line.” 3 The artist so frees himself from personal concerns that "to artistic perception it is all one whether we see the sunset from a prison or from a palace.” 4 "It is this blessedness of will-less perception which casts an enchanting glamour over the past and the distant, and presents them to us in so fair a light.” 5 Even hostile objects, when we contemplate them without excitation of the will, and without immediate danger, become sublime. Similarly, tragedy may take an esthetic value, by delivering us from the strife of the individual will, and enabling us to see our suffering in a larger view. Art alleviates the ills of life by showing us the eternal and universal behind the tran

1 I, 290.

2 So in literature, character-portrayal rises to greatness-other things equal -in proportion as the clearly-delineated individual represents also a universal type, like Faust and Marguerite or Quixote and Sancho Panza.

3 III, 145.

4 I, 265.

5 I, 256.

sitory and the individual. Spinoza was right: "in so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect it participates in eternity." 1

This power of the arts to elevate us above the strife of wills is possessed above all by music.2 "Music is by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas" or essences of things, but it is "the copy of the will itself"; it shows us the eternally moving, striving, wandering will, always at last returning to itself to begin its striving anew. "This is why the effect of music is more powerful and penetrating than the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, while it speaks of the things itself."3 It differs too from the other arts because it affects. our feelings directly, and not through the medium of ideas; it speaks to something subtler than the intellect. What symmetry is to the plastic arts, rhythm is to music; hence music and architecture are antipodal; architecture, as Goethe said, is frozen music; and symmetry is rhythm standing still.

4

4. Religion

It dawned upon Schopenhauer's maturity that his theory of art-as the withdrawal of the will, and the contemplation of the eternal and universal-was also a theory of religion. In youth he had received very little religious training; and his temper did not incline him to respect the ecclesiastical organizations of his time. He despised theologians: "As ultima ratio," or the final argument, "of theologians we find among many nations the stake"; and he described religion as "the

1 I, 230. Cf. Goethe: "There is no better deliverance from the world" of strife "than through art."-Elective Affinities, New York, 1902, p. 336.

2 "Schopenhauer was the first to recognize and designate with philosophic clearness the position of music with reference to the other fine arts."Wagner, Beethoven, Boston, 1872, p. 23.

3 I, 333.

4 Hanslick (The Beautiful in Music, London, 1891, p. 23) objects to this, and argues that music affects only the imagination directly. Strictly, of course, it affects only the senses directly.

5 II, 365.

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metaphysics of the masses. But in later years he began to see a profound significance in certain religious practices and dogmas. "The controversy which is so perseveringly carried on in our own day between supernaturalists and rationalists rests on the failure to recognize the allegorical nature of all religion." "2 Christianity, for example, is a profound philosophy of pessimism; "the doctrine of original sin (assertion of the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is the great truth which constitutes the essence of Christianity.” 3 Fasting is a remarkable expedient for weakening those desires that lead never to happiness but either to disillusionment or to further desire. "The power by virtue of which Christianity was able to overcome first Judaism, and then the heathenism of Greece and Rome, lies solely in its pessimism, in the confession that our state is both exceedingly wretched and sinful, while Judaism and heathenism were both optimistic": they thought of religion as a bribe to the heavenly powers for aid towards earthly success; Christianity thought of religion as a deterrent from the useless quest of earthly happiness. In the midst of worldly luxury and power it has held up the ideal of the saint, the Fool in Christ, who refuses to fight, and absolutely overcomes the individual will.5

4

Buddhism is profounder than Christianity, because it makes the destruction of the will the entirety of religion, and preaches Nirvana as the goal of all personal development. The Hindus were deeper than the thinkers of Europe, because their interpretation of the world was internal and intuitive, not external and intellectual; the intellect divides everything, intuition unites everything; the Hindus saw that the "I" is a delusion; that the individual is merely phenomenal, and that the only reality is the Infinite One-"That art thou." "Whoever is able to say this to himself, with regard to every being 1 Essays, "Religion," p. 2.

2 II, 369.

3 I, 524.

4 II, 372.

5 I, 493.

with whom he comes in contact,”—whoever is clear-eyed and clear-souled enough to see that we are all members of one organism, all of us little currents in an ocean of will,-he "is certain of all virtue and blessedness, and is on the direct road to salvation." 1 Schopenhauer does not think that Christianity will ever displace Buddhism in the East: "it is just the same as if we fired a bullet against a cliff." 2 Rather, Indian philosophy streams into Europe, and will profoundly alter our knowledge and our thought. "The influence of the Sanskrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek letters in the fifteenth century."

4

The world-will is stronger "The less the will is excited,

The ultimate wisdom, then, is Nirvana: to reduce one's self to a minimum of desire and will. than ours; let us yield at once. the less we suffer." The great masterpieces of painting have always represented countenances in which "we see the expression of the completest knowledge, which is not directed to particular things, but has . . . become the quieter of all will.” 5 "That peace which is above all reason, that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence and serenity, . as Raphael and Correggio have represented it, is an entire and certain gospel; only knowledge remains, the will has vanished." 6

VII. THE WISDOM OF DEATH

And yet, something more is needed. By Nirvana the individual achieves the peace of will-lessness, and finds salvation; but after the individual? Life laughs at the death of the individual; it will survive him in his offspring, or in the offspring of others; even if his little stream of life runs dry there are

1 I, 483.

2 I, 460.

3 I, xiii. Perhaps we are witnessing a fulfillment of this prophecy in the growth of theosophy and similar faiths.

4 "Counsels and Maxims," p. 19.

5 I, 300.

6 531.

a thousand other streams that grow broader and deeper with every generation. How can Man be saved? Is there a Nirvana for the race as well as for the individual?

Obviously, the only final and radical conquest of the will must lie in stopping up the source of life—the will to reproduce. "The satisfaction of the reproductive impulse is utterly and intrinsically reprehensible because it is the strongest affirmation of the lust for life." 1 What crime have these children committed that they should be born?

If, now, we contemplate the turmoil of life, we behold all occupied with its want and misery, straining all their powers to satisfy its infinite needs and to ward off its multifarious sorrows, yet without daring to hope for anything else than simply the preservation of this tormented existence for a short span of time. In between, however, and in the midst of this tumult, we see the glance of two lovers meet longingly; yet why so secretly, fearfully, and stealthily? Because these lovers are the traitors who seek to perpetuate the whole want and drudgery which would otherwise speedily reach an end; . . . here lies the profound reason for the shame connected with the process of generation.2

It is woman that is the culprit here; for when knowledge has reached to will-lessness, her thoughtless charms allure man again into reproduction. Youth has not intelligence enough to see how brief these charms must be; and when the intelligence comes, it is too late.

With young girls Nature seems to have had in view what, in the language of the drama, is called a striking effect; as for a few years she dowers them with a wealth of beauty and is lavish in her gift of charm, at the expense of all the rest of their lives; so that during those years they may capture the fancy of some man to such a degree that he is hurried away into undertaking the honorable care of them as long as they live-a step for which there would not seem to be any

1 In Wallace, p. 29.

2 III, 374; I, 423.