which often bear to our conduct such relation as, in a saying of Emerson’s, the desire to go to Boston bears to the possible ways of getting there. “When I want to get to Boston,” says in substance Emerson, “I do not swim the Charles River, but prefer crossing the bridge.” Emerson’s saying was intended to illustrate his own preference for reading translations of foreign authors rather than the originals. It does illustrate very well the preference that we all have for the shortest way out of our sympathetic troubles. To help your suffering neighbor is hard swimming, perhaps amid ice-blocks; to go on and find elsewhere merry company is to take the bridge direct to Boston. Sympathy leads therefore often to the ignoring of another man’s state as real. And this is the very Illusion of Selfishness itself.
Pity may then turn to selfish hatred of the sight of suffering. It is hardly necessary to dwell at length upon the disheartening reverse aspect of the picture, namely, on the fact that, when pity does not lead us to dread the suffering of others, it may lead us to take such credit for our very power to sympathize with pain, that we come to feel an actual delight in the existence of the events that mean suffering to others. Our hearts may so swell with pride at our own importance as pitiful persons, that we may even long to have somebody of our acquaintance in trouble, so that we can go and pose, in the presence of the sufferers, as humane commentators on the occurrence, as heroic endurers of sorrows that we do not really share. This is the second stage of selfish pity. It is even more enduring and incurable than the
