and darkness, permeated by a cloudy element that gave the ensuing grey dusk its coloured radiance.
This nonsense was taken seriously only because of Goethe’s genius in other fields, and then only by the literati and other scientific numskulls. Schopenhauer had considerable literary skill but certainly didn’t fall into the latter category. One wonders why he was taken in. For once his arrogance seems to have failed him. This was perhaps the last time Schopenhauer allowed his ideas to be influenced by a living being whose genius he was willing to recognise. From now on he would have sufficient self-certainty to follow his own intuition at all times – often in the teeth of prevailing contemporary opinion. Fortunately Schopenhauer had an exceptional intellectual instinct, which enabled him to produce a philosophy that was not only original but also uncannily prescient of intellectual developments to come – rather than the philosophical equivalent of Goethe’s theory of colours, which is the usual product of a thinker who dismisses the ideas of his contemporaries with the derision he feels they deserve.
The young Schopenhauer’s admiration for the aging Goethe was deep and heartfelt. And though their friendship was brief, it was the only such warm relationship he was to have in his life. It is no accident that Goethe was almost exactly the same age as Schopenhauer’s father would have been had he not committed suicide. Goethe’s benevolent brilliance was perhaps the only foil for the austere, powerful shadow of Schopenhauer’s dead father. But all this did little to improve things with mother. Goethe hardly helped matters at home when he informed Johanna Schopenhauer that her son would one day be recognised as a genius. In her view there was room for only one of this species on the family perch, and that place was already occupied.
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