“pity springs from a momentary illusion of imagination, so that we first put ourselves in the sufferer’s place, and now, in imagination, fancy that we suffer his pangs in our person.” This, replies Schopenhauer, is a blunder. “It remains to us all the time clear and immediately certain, that he is the sufferer, not we; and it is in his person, not in ours, that we feel the pain, and are troubled. We suffer with him, so in him; we feel his pain as his, and do not fancy that it is ours; yes, the happier our own state is, and the more the consciousness of it contrasts in consequence with the situation of our neighbor, so much the more sensitive are we to pity.” And of this wondrous feeling no complete psychological explanation can be given; the true explanation, thinks Schopenhauer, must be metaphysical. In pity a man comes to a sense of the real oneness in essence of himself and his neighbor.
This pity is, therefore, for Schopenhauer, the only moral motive, first, because it is the only non-egoistic motive, and secondly, because it is the expression of a higher insight. The first character of pity is illustrated by Schopenhauer in an ingenious passage, by means of a comparison of pity and other motives as exhibited in a supposed concrete instance. We shall find it well to quote the most of the passage in full: —
“I will take at pleasure a case as an example to furnish for this investigation an experimentum crucis. To make the matter the harder for me, I will take no case of charity, but an injustice, and one, too, of the most flagrant sort. Suppose two young people, Caius and Titus, both
