Meanwhile he was competing for another prize, offered by the Royal Danish Academy of the Sciences, at Copenhagen, on the subject of the sources or the basis of morality. He was confident of success, and wrote to the Academy asking that the award might be speedily made public, as he proposed to publish his essay along with the one which had been successful in Norway. His confidence was premature, for when the Danish Academy made known its decision, it announced that Schopenhauer's essay was the only one sent in, but that it was unworthy of the prize on several grounds, one of which was, that several of the chief philosophers had been treated with contempt.
From this time his rage against the three philosophers, Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling, knows no bounds. He attributed his failure to win recognition to a conspiracy among them and their followers. His writings abound in violent invective against them. In several ways there are points of contact between the system of Schopenhauer and that of Hegel, but Schopenhauer refused to admit any kinship between them.
His two treatises were published together, as he had { 35} intended. They appeared in 1841 as _The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics_. These two problems are the freedom of the will and the basis of morality. The treatment is little more than an expansion of the theories set forth in his chief work. He finds the roots of morality in sympathy. The sense of brotherhood, which binds together individual and individual, and welds them into an organic whole, is the foundation on which all the moral sentiments are built. All goodness, love, virtue, and nobility of character spring from the same source, from sympathy, which is the same in its nature as pure love. Beyond the egoism, which is fostered by the world around us, there exists also the principle of altruism, impelling men to self-sacrifice, unselfishness, and devotion.
The second edition of _The World as Will and Idea_, which appeared in 1844, seemed at first as likely to fail of attaining recognition as the earlier one. But a change was now at hand. The reign of optimistic pantheism was approaching its end in Germany. The lofty idealism, which was the strength of the dominant school of thought, and which found political expression in the revolutionary movements of 1848, was now followed by a wave of reaction. The democratic movement, after obtaining some temporary triumphs, was checked completely for the time, and a wave of weariness and discouragement passed over the country. Schopenhauer looked on, while Frankfurt was torn violently asunder in the throes of its revolution. His sentiments were against the democratic party, and he seems to have feared, above all else, the possibility of losing his private means. In letters written at this time to his friends, Schopenhauer expresses his dislike and disapproval of the great national movement of 1848. He { 36} was a thorough-going individualist, and the movement, which stirred to the depths the finest natures of the time, found no response in Schopenhauer's heart. His room was used by Austrian soldiers, who shot from the windows upon the democrats below.