" Critics may question
its manner, method and style; but the art lover feels its "graceful
humanity," he does not "praise, or qualify, or measure or explain, or
account for"--he is one with its loveliness--one with the purity and
the truth of the ideal which it represents.
This may explain something of the attitude towards art in
Schopenhauer's philosophy, though to reproduce and exemplify thought
is always difficult, and abstract philosophical thought is especially
so. The real comprehension of a philosopher's mind depends mainly on
how far we are able to get into the atmosphere of his thought; it
depends upon affinity in fact, and this is why philosophy must be the
study, mainly, of the lonely thinker. Explainers and lecturers
necessarily intrude their own individualities into their explanations,
which have to be discounted. Yet when discounted, certain
individualities do help us in philosophy, and even in poetry. Some
minds may be more akin with the philosopher's or poet's than are our
own, and a thought will become more vivid and clear to us, and a poem
more lovely, when we understand it or view it, through a mind to which
it appeals _directly_, and to us through that other.
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