Like all preacher-poets, he is anthropocentric. To his way of
thinking the human mind is so highly organized, so different from that
of beasts, that not all the proofs of ethnology and physiology would
ever induce him to accept the ape-ancestry of man. This monkey-business
is too irksome and humiliating to be true; he waives it aside, with a
sneer at the disgusting arguments of those Englishmen.
That is what happens to men who think that "the spirit alone lives; the
life of the spirit alone is true life." A philosopher weighs the value
of evidence; he makes it his business, before discoursing of the origin
of human intellect, to learn a little something of its focus, the brain;
a little comparative anatomy. These men are not philosophers.
Metaphysicians are poets gone wrong. Schopenhauer invents a "genius of
the race" - there you have his cloven hoof, the pathetic fallacy, the
poet's heritage. There are things in Schopenhauer which make one blush
for philosophy. The day may dawn when this man will be read not for what
he says, but for how he says it; he being one of the few of his race who
can write in their own language. Impossible, of course, not to hit upon
a good thing now and then, if you brood as much as he did. So I remember
one passage wherein he adumbrates the theory of "Recognition Marks"
propounded later by A. R. Wallace, who, when I drew his attention to it,
wrote that he thought it a most interesting anticipation. [10]
He must have stumbled upon it by accident, during one of his excursions
into the inane.
And what of that jovial red-bearded personage who scorned honest work
and yet contrived to dress so well? Everyone liked him, despite his
borrowing propensities. He was so infernally pleasant, and always on the
spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture; it was more than varnish; it
was a veneer, a patina, an enamel: weather-proof stuff. He could talk
most plausibly - art, music, society gossip - everything you please;
everything except scandal. No bitter word was known to pass his lips. He
sympathized with all our little weaknesses; he was too blissfully
contented to think ill of others; he took it for granted that everybody,
like himself, found the world a good place to inhabit. That, I believe,
was the secret of his success. He had a divine intuition for discovering
the soft spots of his neighbours and utilizing the knowledge, in a frank
and gentlemanly fashion, for his own advantage. It was he who invented a
saying which I have since encountered more than once: "Never run after
an omnibus or a woman. There will be another one round in a minute." And
also this: "Never borrow from a man who really expects to be paid back.
You may lose a friend."
What lady is he now living on?
"A good-looking fellow like me - why should I work? Tell me that.
Especially with so many rich ladies in the world aching for somebody to
relieve them of their spare cash?"
"The wealthy woman," he once told me, after I had begun to know him more
intimately, "is a great danger to society. She is so corruptible! People
make her spend money on all kinds of empty and even harmful projects.
Think of the mischief that is done, in politics alone, by the money of
these women. Think of all the religious fads that spring up and are kept
going in a state of prosperity because some woman or other has not been
instructed as to the proper use of her cheque-book. I foresee a positive
decline ahead of us, if this state of affairs is allowed to go on. We
must club together, we reasonable men, and put an end to the scandal.
These women need trimmers; an army of trimmers. I have done a good deal
of trimming in my day. Of course it involves some trouble and a close
degree of intimacy, now and then. But a sensible man will always know
where to draw the line."
"Where do you draw it?"
"At marriage."
Whether he ever dared to tap the venerable Malwida for a loan? Likely
enough. He often played with her feelings in a delicate style, and his
astuteness in such matters was only surpassed by his shamelessness. He
was capable of borrowing a fiver from the Pope - or at least of
attempting the feat; of pocketing some hungry widow's last mite and
therewith purchasing a cigarette before her eyes. All these sums he took
as his due, by right of conquest. Whether he ever "stung" Malwida? I
should have liked to see the idealist's face when confronted in that
cheery off-hand manner with the question whether she happened to have
five hundred francs to spare.
"No? Whatever does it matter, my dear Madame de Meysenbug? Perhaps I
shall be more fortunate another day. But pray don't put yourself out for
an extravagant rascal like myself. I am always spending money - can't
live without it, can one? - and sometimes, though you might not believe
it, on quite worthy objects. There is a poor family I would like to take
you to see one day; the father was cut to pieces in some wretched
agricultural machine, the mother is dying in a hospital for consumption,
and the six little children, all shivering under one blanket - well,
never mind! One does what one can, in a small way. That was an
interesting lecture, wasn't it, on Friday? He made a fine point in what
he said about the relation of the Ego to the Cosmos. All the same, I
thought he was a little hard on Fichte.
