women, that his view was largely influenced by his relations with his
mother, just as one feels that his particular argument in his essay on
education is largely influenced by the course of his own training.

On his coming of age Schopenhauer was entitled to a share of the
paternal estate, a share which yielded him a yearly income of about
�150. He now entered himself at the University of G�ttingen (October
1809), enrolling himself as a student of medicine, and devoting himself
to the study of the natural sciences, mineralogy, anatomy, mathematics,
and history; later, he included logic, physiology, and ethnography. He
had always been passionately devoted to music and found relaxation in
learning to play the flute and guitar. His studies at this time did not
preoccupy him to the extent of isolation; he mixed freely with his
fellows, and reckoned amongst his friends or acquaintances, F.W. Kreise,
Bunsen, and Ernst Schulze. During one vacation he went on an expedition
to Cassel and to the Hartz Mountains. It was about this time, and partly
owing to the influence of Schulze, the author of _Aenesidemus_, and then
a professor at the University of G�ttingen, that Schopenhauer came to
realise his vocation as that of a philosopher.

During his holiday at Weimar he called upon Wieland, then seventy-eight
years old, who, probably prompted by Mrs. Schopenhauer, tried to
dissuade him from the vocation which he had chosen. Schopenhauer in
reply said, "Life is a difficult question; I have decided to spend my
life in thinking about it." Then, after the conversation had continued
for some little time, Wieland declared warmly that he thought that he
had chosen rightly. "I understand your nature," he said; "keep to
philosophy." And, later, he told Johanna Schopenhauer that he thought
her son would be a great man some day.