step. For in pity, we take others' plight on ourselves, become one with it—and if we go far enough, we may almost cease to feel separately, individual craving and even individual consciousness tending to disappear; partly in this way, and partly by actively mortifying ourselves, crucifying the instincts that lead to life, we sink at last into Nirvana.[1] It is pity in the light of its Schopenhauerian consequences of this description that fixed the attention of Nietzsche, and made him look into it and over it in all its forms and guises.[2] A sentiment similar in character, though unaccompanied by the radical general view, is characteristic of Christianity. Indeed, pity is an under (or over) note in modern socialism and anarchism, and in the modern democratic movement generally.[3] To Schopenhauer, pity was the essence of morality itself. f
Now, I find no natural hardness of heart in Nietzsche, and, what is stranger, considering the common opinion, no failure to approve pity within limits. He once spoke of it as shameful to eat one's fill while others go hungry. g "I am thinking," he writes in relation to a friend who had had a sad experience, "how I can make a little joy for him, as proof of my great pity." h His sister says as to his experiences as ambulance nurse in the Franco-Prussian war: "What the sympathetic heart of my brother suffered at that time cannot be expressed; months after, he still heard the groans and agonized cries of the wounded. During the first year it was practically impossible for him to speak of these happenings."[4] Nietzsche himself says in a general way that one who begins by unlearning the love of other people ends by finding nothing worthy of love.[5] He speaks reverently of Prometheus's pity for men and sacrifice in their behalf.[6] i Addressing judges, Zarathustra says, "Your putting to death should be an act of pity, not of
- ↑ See Nietzsche's moving description of the saint in the early tribute to Schopenhauer ("Schopenhauer as Educator," sect. 5).
- ↑ Cf. Genealogy etc., preface, §§ 5, 6; Beyond Good and Evil, §§ 222, 293; Dawn of Day, § 138; The Antichristian, § 7; Will to Power, § 82; also the comments of Simmel, op. cit., pp. 213-4; Vaihinger, op. cit., p. 88; Chatterton-Hill, op. cit., pp. 22, 69. There is a sarcastic reference to the religion of pity " and its disciples in Joyful Science, § 377.
- ↑ Cf. Dawn of Day, § 132; Beyond Good and Evil, § 202.
- ↑ Leben etc., II, 682.
- ↑ footnote
- ↑ Dawn of Day, § 401.
