In 1813 he had already said: “Beneath my hand, and still more in my head, a work, a philosophy, is ripening, which will be at once an ethic and a metaphysic, hitherto so unreasonably separated, just as man has been divided into body and soul. The work grows, and gradually becomes concrete, like the fœtus in its mother’s womb. I do not know what will appear at last. I recognize a member, an organ, one part after another. I write without seeking for results, for I know that it all stands on the same foundation, and will thus compose a vital and organic whole. I do not understand the system of the work, just as a mother does not understand the fœtus that develops in her bowels, but she feels it tremble within her. My mind draws its food from the world by the medium of intelligence and thought; this nourishment gives body to my work; and yet I do not know why it should happen in me and not in others who receive the same food. O Chance! sovereign of this world, let me live in peace for a few years yet, for I love my work as a mother loves her child. When it is ripe and brought to the light, then exercise your rights, and claim interest for the delay. But if, in this iron century, I succumb before that hour, may these unripened principles and studies be received by the world as they are, until perhaps some related mind appears who will collect and unite the members.” All the characteristic symptoms of the various steps that lead up to insanity, the rapid passage from profound grief to excessive joy, may be found in Schopenhauer. In a moment of tranquil reflection on himself, in 1814, after having found that men were “a soup of bread dipped in water with a little arsenic,” and after having declared that “their egoism is like that which binds the dog to his master,” he wrote: “And now do not except yourself; examine your loves and your friendships; observe if your objective judgments are not in great part subjective and impure.” And in another page: “Just as the most beautiful body contains within it fæcal and mephitic gases, so the noblest character offers traits of badness, and the greatest genius presents traces of pettiness and excessive pride.”