than could have been expected from a strict maxim of duty, general, abstract, and deduced from certain rational considerations and logical combinations of ideas. For from the latter source one might the less expect success, because the mass of men must remain what they always have been, rude men, unable, by reason of their inevitable bodily tasks, to get time to cultivate their minds, and therefore, being rude men, must find general principles and abstract truths unintelligible, so that only the concrete has meaning for them. But for the arousing of this pity, which we have shown to be the only source of unselfish actions, and so the true basis of morality, one needs no abstract, but only perceptive knowledge (bedarf es keiner abstrakten, sondern nur der anschauenden Erkenntniss), only the mere understanding of the concrete case, to which pity at once lays claim, without further reflective mediation.” And, to make his view clearer, Schopenhauer further appeals to passages quoted by him with approval from Rousseau:[1] “II est done bien certain, que la pitié est un sentiment naturel, qui, modérant dans chaque individu I’amour de soi-même, concourt a la conservation mutuelle de toute I’espèce. . . . C’est, en un mot, dans ce sentiment naturel plutôt, que dans les argumens subtils, qu’il faut chercher la cause de la répugnance qu’éprouverait tout homme à mal faire.” Pity, then, is no abstract principle, but a tendency to do so and so in a concrete case. For the natural and unlearned man it is a mere sentiment, a feeling with his fellow, no more.
- ↑ “Discours sur I’origine de l’inégalite.” Quoted in theGrundlage der Moral, p. 247.
