Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1911-05-22
Say. philosopher Isn't Suicide Pilo'

Says philosopher Isn't Suicide Pilot.
To the Editor OF the Evening Star:
Please allow me to put in a good
word for a man who has been dead
these fifty-one years and is, there
fore, not in a position himself to pro-
test when Islander, libel, obloquy and
revilement are heaped upon him every
time somebody takes a notion to COM
init suicide.
I refer to S~chopenhauer. the Germen
philosopher, whom so many criticize
and SO few really know, and still fewer
understand.
Even among the educated, nay,
among the so-called savants, o viii
find this blatant ignorance which
vaunts. itself with supercilious SUI
periority and affects to o down with
disdain upon a thinker of whom Toll
stoi, in his prime. said, Il believe
Schopenhauer to be the gref est genius
that ever lived. His work on The
World AS Will and Phenomenon is
truly a mirror in miniature of the en-
tire universe"
Sir, this ignorance, so rampant
everywhere, is, of course, ~excusable in
one whom the worry for existence has
not afforded leisure to enrich and
embellish his mind, but i is not only
~inexcusable but absolutely scandalous
In those who pass for cultured and
pique themselves upon their learning.
The suicide of Joseph Hull, a civil
engineer, has now been laid to the door
of Schopenhauer, who, in the articles
on the case, is referred to as the
prophet of pessimism and the oracle
of suicide
The word pessimism has an ugly
sound. but if one will take the trouble
to ascertain just what meaning h
%penhauer attached to the word md
then take the furtht trouble to SEQ
just how marvelously he worked out
his case in favor of pessimism. it Is
not too much to say that his system
will not be decried as so very absurd
or baneful; but this Is not to the pres
ent purpose. 1t is against the d~esigna-
ton of S%chopenhauer as the oracle Of
suicide" that I protest.
Not only is he not an advocate Of
suicide, but he is most outspoken in
his opposition to it. He %denounces 1t,
not, indeed, on the trite, ridiculous and
obviously false ground of cowardice,
but as an immoral act md (from is
high metaphysical point of view alb
solutely purposeless.
dis teaching on this subject is that
the highest wisdom Cle can attain Is
to become resigned Qn the theological
sense of the world % the burdens,
trials. misfortunes. ~sicknesses and
death which are the common lot of
whatever lives. For, he believes, with
the theosophist, hat life on earth is
but one of the evolutionary stages OF
a persons existence and that the only
way h car hope to ever escape from
a repetition of the troubles of living
is to acquire this resignation. which Is
another way of saying Ito learn to
make the best of a bad bargain"
None but saints ever really, attain
to this sublime height of self-denial, or.
as Sehopenhauer calls it, negation of
the will; and, therefore, to Schopen-
hauer the great heroes are not your
Napoleons and Caesars, who conquer
armies, but such men as st. Francis
of Assist and others who have cor
quered themselves and thereby reached
the enviable point where they are re-
signed to whatever betides,
And can anyone imagine such a
thing as a saint committing suicide?
The thing is impossible. The person
who commits suicide does not do so
as an act of resignation-of negation of
the will. On the contrary, suicide,
Schopenhauer shows. is the strongest
kind of affirmation of the will. The
suicide does not thereby prove that he
hates life, He proves, only that he