But here, in the same way, my ambition is greater than my
power; my philosophical perception is superior to my speculative gift. I
have not the energy of my opinions; I have far greater width than
inventiveness of thought, and, from timidity, I have allowed the
critical intelligence in me to swallow up the creative genius. Is it
indeed from timidity?
Alas! with a little more ambition, or a little more good luck, a
different man might have been made out of me, and such as my youth gave
promise of.
August 16, 1869.--I have been thinking over Schopenhauer. It has struck
me and almost terrified me to see how well I represent Schopenhauer's
typical man, for whom "happiness is a chimera and suffering a reality,"
for whom "the negation of will and of desire is the only road to
deliverance," and "the individual life is a misfortune from which
impersonal contemplation is the only enfranchisement," etc. But the
principle that life is an evil and annihilation a good lies at the root
of the system, and this axiom I have never dared to enunciate in any
general way, although I have admitted it here and there in individual
cases. What I still like in the misanthrope of Frankfort, is his
antipathy to current prejudice, to European hobbies, to western
hypocrisies, to the successes of the day.
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