Although Schopenhauer discountenanced the attempt to connect a philosophers biography with his work, something has to be said about his character, since this has been dwelt on to his disadvantage by opponents. There is abundant material for a personal estimate in the correspondence and reminiscences published after his death by his disciples Julius Frauenstaedt and Wilhelm Gwinner. The apparent contradiction is at once obvious between the ascetic consummation of his ethics and his unascetic life, carefully occupied in its latter part with rules for the preservation of his naturally robust health. He was quite aware of this, but holds it absurd to require that a moralist should commend only the virtues which he possesses. It is as if the requirement were set up that a sculptor is to be himself a model of beauty. A saint need not be a philosopher, nor a philosopher a saint. The science of morals is as theoretical as any other branch of philosophy. Fundamentally character is unmodifiable, though knowledge, it is allowed, may change the mode of action within the limits of the particular character. The passage to the state of asceticism cannot be effected by moral philosophy, but depends on a kind of 'grace.' After all, it might be replied, philosophers, whether they succeed or not, do usually make at least an attempt to live in accordance with the moral ideal they set up. The best apology in Schopenhauer's case is that the fault may have been as much in his ideal as in his failure to conform to it. The eloquent pages he has devoted to the subject of holiness only make manifest the inconsequence (which he admits) in the passage to it. For, as we shall see, this has nothing in common with the essentially rational asceticism of the schools of later antiquity; which was a rule of self-limitation in view of the philosophic life. He did in a way of his own practise something of this; and, on occasion, he sets forth the theory of it; but he quite clearly sees the difference. His own ideal, which he never attempted to practise, is that of the self-torturing ascetics of the Christian Middle Age. Within the range of properly human virtue, he can in many respects hold his own, not only as a philosopher but as a man. If his egoism and vanity are undeniable, he undoubtedly possessed the virtues of rectitude and compassion. What he would have especially laid stress on was the conscientious devotion to his work. With complete singleness of purpose he used for a disinterested end the leisure which he regarded as the most fortunate of endowments. As he said near the close of his life, his intellectual conscience was clear.