This essay interprets George Eliot’s novella, “The Lifted Veil,” as Eliot’s experimentation with Arthur Schopenhauer’s asceticism. Even though she did not read the work of Schopenhauer before 1873, Eliot became familiar with the major tenets and premises of Schopenhauer’s philosophy as early as 1853 when John Oxenford’s article, “Iconoclasm in German Literature,” was published by the Westminster Review, of which Eliot was a co-editor. Schopenhauer’s subversive understanding of human existence proves quite pertinent to the interpretation of Latimer’s enigmatic behaviors, throwing light particularly on the contradictory nature of his relationships with other people. While acknowledging he has “a morbidly sensitive nature perpetually craving sympathy and support” (15), Latimer hardly makes any efforts to develop sympathetic relationships with others but instead gradually isolates himself from all society. In particular, although he has desired Bertha Grant, his half-brother’s fiance, so ardently and passionately, Latimer increasingly shuns her company after his marriage to her and grows indifferent to her to the point of becoming entirely alienated from her. Reading the novella in relation to Oxenford’s explication of Schopenhauer’s major ideas, this essay contends that Latimer is not so much a misanthrope as a Schopenhauerian ascetic who strives to achieve salvation from human suffering through the negation of will to life.