beyond the present scope of this chapter), whether the altruistic motives, whatever they are, might not somehow be made of evident and general validity as ethical principles, if we could show that in the moment of pity or in some other altruistic moment there is expressed the nascent discovery of an Illusion, namely, the Illusion of Selfishness. That is what Schopenhauer supposed himself to have found out. In pity he found an unselfish impulse. But this unselfish impulse was, for the first, just an impulse, a sentiment, beloved of Rousseau, remote from the abstract principles that the philosophers had been seeking. Here was unselfishness, but still seeming to need reflective development and deeper foundation. Schopenhauer thought that he had found such a deeper basis for pity when he suggested that it was an imperfect metaphysical insight. In effect one might sum up his views thus: In deeper truth, he says, you and I are one Being, namely, the One great Being, the Absolute Will, which works in us both. But because we both perceive in time and space, therefore you and I seem to ourselves to be different and perhaps warring individuals, like the two halves of a divided worm. Only the sentiment of pity sees through the temporal veil of illusion, and so seeing, in its own intuitive, unreflective way, it whispers to us that the pain of each is in truth the other’s pain. And when we really feel thus, we forget the illusion of sense, and act as if we were one. So acting we follow the higher insight, and when metaphysic comes, it will justify us in our view. Such, in our own words, are Schopenhauer’s ideas.
