Only when he reaches the verge of old age do we once again have some record of him. This latter part of his life was spent with unvaried regularity. His chief occupation and solace is philosophy. His daily routine was mapped out, according to a regular plan, which hardly varied from day to day. He worked during the forenoon for three or four hours. At noon he enjoyed half an hour's relaxation on the flute. He dined daily at a hotel. After an hour's rest, the afternoon was given up to lighter literature. His favourite authors, among poets, were Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Calderon. The study of the great classical writers was all his life his greatest delight. The degradation in style of contemporary literature, which he constantly bemoaned, he held to be due largely to the neglect of classical literature. "Without Latin," he wrote, "a man must be content to be counted amongst the vulgar." He regretted the disuse of the Latin language as a means of communication between scholars. Apart altogether from the educational value of the classics, he thought no other literature afforded the same refreshment and enjoyment for the mind. To take one of the classics in one's hand, even for half {32} an hour, is to feel refreshed, purified, elevated, and strengthened, exactly as if one had drunk from a fresh rock spring. In the afternoon, whatever the weather, Schopenhauer took his daily walk, together with his dog, his invariable companion. The two were well-known figures in Frankfurt, as they took their customary exercise together. Schopenhauer's devotion to his dog was boundless. For the animal world altogether he had a special tenderness, pitying animals as the tortured souls of the earth, and holding that in all essentials they are the same as man. He condemned vivisection, on the ground that animals have rights. For two hours he took his customary walk, at a rapid pace, in accordance with his theory that quick movement is essential to health. Then he visited the reading-room of the town, never omitting to look through the _Times_. The evening was spent frequently at the theatre, or in the concert-room. In his later years, his growing deafness robbed him of much of the pleasure which he had always won from music. On returning home, he read for an hour, and then retired to rest. All his life he was afraid of robbers, and took extraordinary precautions against them. He slept invariably with loaded weapons by his bedside, and his valuables were hidden away with great ingenuity in various corners of his rooms. He believed that a thinker needed more than the ordinary amount of sleep to recuperate after the day's labours. His rule of life was modelled on that of Kant, but of Kant's early rising he strongly disapproved, believing it to be a reckless waste of vital energy.