ing it as somehow not quite real? Schopenhauer would reply: The heartless man, who has no compassion, falls into a sort of illusion about his neighbor. He thinks more or less clearly that that pain of his neighbor’s is a sort of unreal pain, not as living as would be his own pain. But the pitiful man, the only quite unselfish man, — he perceives the reality of his neighbor’s suffering. He knows that that is no phantom suffering, but even such pain as his own would be.
We want to test this idea in a practical way. So we say: Let us judge of this sympathy by its fruits? Are we in fact certain to be led to unselfish acts if in all cases we obey the dictates of sympathy? Schopenhauer thinks that he has secured altruism for his sympathetic or pitiful man by remarking that, in true pity, one feels the pain, not as his own, but as the other’s pain. To follow the dictates of this sympathy would of necessity lead, one might say, to the effort unselfishly to relieve the other. But then does not this depend very much upon the way in which pity comes to be an object of reflection for the man that feels it? Pity is often of itself an indeterminate impulse, that may be capable of very various interpretation by the subsequent reflection of the pitiful mind. One may through pity come to reflect that this feeling stands for a real pain in the other man, and may act accordingly; or one may have very different reflections. One may fail to realize the other’s pain as such, and may be driven back upon himself. For most people the first reflection that follows upon strong pity is no unselfish
