The relationship became particularly strained when Minna intercepted a note to Mathilde from her husband. The relationship soon ended when Minna was sent to Dresden to seek amnesty for her husband, and Otto took his wife to Italy. We will never know the true extent of the relationship between Wagner and Mathilde, for Wagner's heirs preserved the musical quotations from the letters between the two and destroyed the remainder. Schopenhauer was a pessimist who followed Kant's Idealist school. His belief was that people do not have individual wills, but rather are part of a single will pervading the universe.
Individuality is only an illusion.
Since man has no will, he is completely at the mercy of the world around him. Because Schopenhauer saw the cosmic will as wicked, he believed that man's destiny was to be eternal suffering. Not unlike Wagner , Schopenhauer had trouble keeping friends. Even his own mother eventually forbade him from her home, because he would drive her friends away during his long, pessimistic discussions. His philosophy stated that life was a painful process from which relief could be found through art or denial.