OF REALITY. 



483 



of Eeality full in the face. He does not shirk the 

 task of finding an answer to the outstanding problem of 

 Kant's philosophy : What is the " Thing in itself " ? ^ 



Ignoring the complicated nature of the problem — 

 which results from the fact that in discussing the 

 question of the difference of the subjective and the 

 objective side of reality, each individual mind mixes up 

 what is its own inner experience with what it knows by 

 considering itself, as it were, as one of the many persons 

 which exist around it — Schopenhauer treats the problem 

 of the Thing in itself in its most abstract form. 

 Starting from the statement that our own self is 

 certainly a reality, he maintains that we must be able 

 to find within ourselves the essence of reality, the nature 



Her bar t. With the latter the ceu- 

 tral interest was the etliical, and 

 through this he had a genuine 

 understanding for Kant and Fichte, 

 especiallj" for Fichte's personahty, 

 though he soon developed a marked 

 aversion to the constructive at- 

 tempts of the earlier, and the 

 mysticism of the later, form of 

 Fichte's speculation. 



^ Schopenhauer in philosophy, like 

 Goethe in literature and life, seems 

 through external circumstances to 

 have been at liberty to choose his 

 career without what are usuallj' 

 termed pressing worldly consider- 

 ations. He was thus, of all the 

 thinkers of that period, the only 

 one who came to philosophy with 

 no other interest. This is shown 

 in an interesting anecdote of an 

 interview which took place, about 

 the year 1811, between him and 

 the aged poet Wieland. When 

 Wieland tried to dissuade Schopen- 

 hauer from following the philo- 

 sophical career, the student of 

 twenty-three replied to him : " Life 



is an awkward affair : I have re- 

 solved to pass my life in thinking 

 about it." This answer impressed 

 the aged poet so much that he 

 recognised in him the born philo- 

 sopher. When, shortly after, he 

 met Schopenhauer's mother at 

 Court, he addressed her as follows : 

 " I have lately made a highly in- 

 teresting acquaintance ! Do you 

 know with whom ? with your son. 

 I was delighted to see this young 

 man ; something great will some 

 day become of him " (see Kuno 

 Fischer, ' Arthur Schopenhauer,' 

 1893, p. 29). Schopenhauer was in 

 other respects the very opposite of 

 Herbart, who was driven to philo- 

 sophy through an early interest in 

 education and the desire to be a 

 teacher, a vocation which Schopen- 

 hauer only tried for a short time 

 when his pecuniary independence 

 seemed threatened, and which he 

 very soon abandoned in order to 

 devote himself exclusively to the 

 working out of his System. 



