# The Religious Aspect of Philosophy/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV. ALTRUISM AND EGOISM IN CERTAIN RECENT DISCUSSIONS.
    But if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
Not even yet have we exhausted the perplexities involved in this fundamental difficulty of moral theory. Some one may say: “Let the ideals in general take care of themselves. We are concerned in this world with individual and concrete duties. These at least are plain.” But these also involve questions concerning the ideal. Let us see then how the same difficulty that has beset the more general moral doctrines, returns to plague us in case of the theoretical treatment of one of these plain duties. Our discussion will here gain in definiteness what it loses in generality. Let us choose a concrete moral question, namely, the problem of the true ground of the moral distinctions and other moral relations between what people nowadays like to call altruism and what they like to call egoism.
Upon what, then, if upon anything, is founded the moral precept: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself? Or is there any foundation for it at all? To be quite familiar in discussing this problem, let us take it as it appears in recent discussion. The ​answers of some recent moralists will illustrate for us afresh the great problem of ethics. We shall find two classes of efforts made to solve the difficulty. On the one hand moralists appear whose tendency is mainly, although not always quite wholly realistic. They say that, assuming the selfish aim as from the beginning self-evident, the unselfish aim soon appears as a necessary concomitant and assistant of the selfish aim. Such writers, from Hobbes to the present day, have insisted upon unselfishness as a more or less refined selfishness, the product of enlightenment. To this view one opposes very naturally the objection that real unselfishness is thus in fact rendered impossible. The moral ideal resulting is therefore, whether right or wrong in itself, at all events at war with other well-known ideals. And hence the explanation satisfies nobody. One still lacks a judge to end the warfare.
On the other hand, however, more idealistic moralists have tried to make unselfishness dependent on some impulse, such as pity or sympathy, whose dictates shall be perfectly definite and self-evident, and yet not, like the supposed dictates of conscience, either abstract or mysterious. But to such a foundation one opposes very naturally again the objection that all such judgments of feeling are capricious, that pity and sympathy are confused and deceitful feelings, wholly unfit to give moral insight, and that no ideal can be founded on the shifting sand of such realities.
The results of such criticisms will once more be skeptical, but the skepticism on which we are here ​insisting is so necessary a foundation for ethics, that we make no apology for dwelling upon it yet farther, devoting to the special problems suggested by these recent discussions of selfishness and unselfishness a separate chapter.
I.
In a collection of Servian popular tales may be found one that runs somewhat as follows: Once there lived two brothers, of whom the elder was very incautious and wasteful, but always lucky, so that in spite of himself he grew constantly richer, while the younger, although very industrious and careful, was invariably unfortunate, so that at last he lost everything, and had to wander out into the wide world to beg. The poor wretch, after much suffering, resolved to go to no less a person than Fate himself, and to inquire wherefore he had been thus tormented. Long and dreadful wildernesses were passed, and finally the wanderer reached the gloomy house. Now visitors at Fate’s dwelling dare not begin to speak when they come, but must wait until Fate shall address them, and meanwhile must humbly do after Fate whatever he does. So the wanderer had to live in the house for several days, silent, and busily imitating Fate’s behavior. He found that Fate lives not always in the same way, but on some days enjoys a golden bed, with a rich banquet and untold heaps of treasure scattered about; on some days again is surrounded with silver, and eats dainty but somewhat plainer food; on some days has brazen and copper wealth only, with coarse food; and on some ​days, penniless and ragged, sleeps on the floor, digs the ground, and gnaws a crust. Each night he is asked by a supernatural voice: "How shall those live who have this day been born?" Fate always replies: "As I have fared this day, so may they fare."
Thus our beggar found the secret of his own misfortunes; for he had been born on a day of poverty. But when at last Fate broke the silence, the visitor begged him to tell whether there could be any way whereby he might escape from the consequences of his unlucky birth. "I will tell thee," said Fate. "Get thee home again, and ask thy brother to let thee adopt his little daughter. For she was born on one of the golden days. Adopting her, thou shalt thenceforth call whatever thou receivest her own. But never call anything thine. And so shalt thou be rich." The beggar joyfully left Fate's dreary house, with its sad round of days, and went back to the world of labor and hope. There, by following the advice that he had received, he became in fact very wealthy; since all that he undertook prospered. But the wealth was his adopted daughter's. For always he called his gains hers. One day he grew however very weary of this, and said to himself: "These fields and flocks and houses and treasures are not really hers. In truth I have earned them. They are mine." No sooner had he spoken the fatal words than lightning fell from heaven and began to burn his grain-fields, and the floods rose to drown his flocks. So that terror-stricken the wretch fell on his face and cried: "Nay, nay, O Fate, I spoke no truth; they ​are not mine, but hers, hers alone.” And thereupon flame and flood vanished, and the man dwelt thenceforth in peace and plenty.
II.
The really deep thought that imperfectly expresses itself in this little Servian tale may suggest many sorts of reflections. Just now we shall busy ourselves with only one of the questions that are brought to mind by the story. Many who nowadays have much to say about what they call altruism, actually explain all altruism as a kind of selfish evasion of the consequences of cruder selfishness, so that at bottom they really counsel men much as Fate counseled the wanderer. They say in effect: “To make thyself happy, do certain things called duties to thy neighbor. That we call altruism. Thou shalt have thy reward. For what is more useful to a man than a man? If therefore thou dost well to him, thou shalt make him in many ways of great service to thee. And so, to get happiness for thyself, see that thou be not openly merely a seeker of thy happiness; but call that which thou seekest his happiness. Calling it his will help to make it thine. Be selfish by casting aside grosser selfishness. Live for the others as the means of living for thyself. In coöperation is safety. Act therefore as a good member of the community, and thou shalt prosper. But such action requires altruism. As the man gave his wealth to his adopted daughter, so that he might own it himself and outwit his destiny, so must thou ​make thy interests into the interests of society, and by so doing be true to thyself.” But now such altruism, as one at once sees, has no right to parade itself as genuine altruism at all, and if it be the end of conduct, there is no moral conduct distinct from cleverness. But if this be true, it is at least incumbent upon the moralist to explain why the popular ideal of unselfishness is thus so very far wrong.
More or less disguised, the doctrine here generally stated appears in modern discussion since Hobbes. Let us follow it into some of its hiding-places, and to that end let us distinguish selfishness and unselfishness as ideals or ends of conduct, from selfishness and unselfishness as means, accidentally useful to get an end.
III.
Altruism is the name of a tendency. Of what tendency? Is it the result or the intent that makes a deed altruistic? Was our hero an altruist when he gave to his adopted daughter the name and the enjoyment of a possessor of wealth? Or would he have needed in addition to all this a particular disposition of mind ere he could be called an altruist?
We need not dispute about mere names as such. Let everybody apply the name Altruism as he will; but possibly we shall do well to recall to the reader’s mind what ought nowadays to be the merest commonplace of ethics, namely, that we cannot regard any quality as moral or the reverse, in so far as the expression of it is an external accident, with which the man himself and his deliberate aim have nothing ​to do. Ethical judgments deal with purposes. On any theory of right and wrong the man himself, not the accident of fortune, determines the moral character of his act; and this view must be held equally whether one believes the man’s will to be free or to be bound. Hence the unforeseen or unintended outcome, or any other accidental accompaniment of my act, does not make me egoistic or altruistic in case egoism and altruism are to be qualities that have any moral character at all. If my property is accidentally destroyed by fire, and if the loss causes great damage to my creditors or to people dependent on me, the loss makes me no less or more an altruist, although I can no longer do good as before. If my purely selfish plan chances to do others good, I am no less an egoist, although I have made my fellows happy. In short, he who means anything, and does what he can to realize his intention, must be judged according to his intent. Circumstances control the outcome, and they make of the chance discoverer of the first bit of gold in a California mill-race a greater altruist, to judge solely by consequences, than a hero would be who sacrificed himself in a good cause, and lost the battle. But no moral system could make genuine saintliness out of the deed of the man who by chance has found what the world needed. And to take one more example, the power die stets das Böse will, und stets das Gute schafft, is not altruistic in the moral sense, however vast its creations may become.
All this we maintain, because, if you are morally criticising a disposition, you must study what it is, ​not what are its accidental surroundings. Moral distinctions must apply to aims as such. Unless you are judging men exactly as you judge the north wind or the value of rain, not as consciously good or bad, but as mere forces that happen to produce such and such results under such and such conditions, you must study, not first the accidental circumstances, but the men. And in fact all moralists, however much they may condemn the weighing of mere motives, however much they desire to take just the consequences into account, as Bentham did, are nevertheless forced to separate in their moral judgments accidental from expected consequences. We maintain that this abstraction of a disposition from its accidental expressions must be rigidly carried out in order to get a moral doctrine of any significance. Let others study natural forces. We here are studying men, and are considering what ideal of a man we can form. Whatever the accidents of the outer world give him in the way of means, we want to know his real intent, and to judge that. But if the intent of the man does alone make him altruistic or the reverse, then what, for example, is the position, in ethical controversy, of any system that declares altruism to be morally good because the individual needs the social order to assist him, and must therefore in all prudence try to further the social ends as a means to the furthering of his own? Does such a system say anything whatever about altruism as such? Does it not make enlightened egoism the one rule of life? And if this is what is meant, why not say so plainly? If the intent of the ​act makes it altruistic or the reverse, then a man who helps his friend, or his neighbor, or society, and who is honest, and kind, and public-spirited solely because he wants to get protection and help in return, is no altruist, but is as egoistic as a Judas or as a Thomassen. He is only clearer-headed than they were. On the other hand, if by any possibility any one makes the good of others his sole end, and with this as end takes care of his own health, or develops his mental powers, or amasses wealth, but all merely for the sake of being able to benefit others, then is such a man not egoistic, even while working for himself, but altruistic throughout. For such a man by hypothesis aims, not at his own personal good, but solely at the good of others.
All this is consequent upon the general doctrine that the distinction between altruism and egoism, as moral qualities, must depend on no external accident, but on the personal deed of the man himself. For, to make special mention of what many forget, the means that you take to get any end are for you merely physical accidents. If things were otherwise, you would with the same intent do other things to get what you seek. Not what you have to do in getting your ends, but what you actually aimed at, is morally significant. Hence the altruism of consequences as such is morally insignificant, and the altruism of intent is alone morally significant. But yet this obvious and seemingly very commonplace distinction is, by the views that we are combating, wholly lost sight of in its further application to human life. We may hear in modern controversy, ​for instance, of a “conflict between altruism and egoism,” such as the one that Mr. Spencer discusses in his “Data of Ethics,” and we may draw near to learn how the conflict goes. We shall possibly find the question put thus: If a man in trying to be altruistic were so far to forget himself as to injure his health, or to become so weak as to have no healthy children; if he were to be careless of his property, to let his mind go untrained, or to narrow his own life too much, why then his own objects would be defeated, he would be unable to help anybody, he might do harm, and he could be no genuine altruist. Therefore altruism must not oppose egoism too much, else altruism will defeat itself. On the other hand, we hear, if egoism is extravagant, it will in its turn fail to get its own great end, self-satisfaction. For it is useful to one to have his fellow-members in the social organism well-contented, efficient, and moral. One must try to make them so, that he himself may enjoy the fruits of their happiness. He pays more taxes, and also higher prices for what he buys, if the community as a whole is not contented and happy, as well as healthy and moral. Enlightened selfishness therefore means for him public spirit. His neighbor’s diseases are apt to infect his own family; hence, if enlightened, he will do what he conveniently can to keep his neighbor well. His neighbor’s peace of mind tends to make his own mind peaceful, hence he will help his neighbor out of trouble. Otherwise he would have to live in anxiety, loneliness, weakness, and danger. His life would be hard, and probably his death would ​be early. So egoism must not be too extravagant. Altruism is “equally imperative.” Thus, perhaps, we should hear the so-called “conflict” discussed. If such views were urged, what should we say about them? We should have to say that they touch in no wise at all the true moral distinction and warfare between selfishness and altruism. They show only that, whatever the opposition in aim, the two principles have after all, in this world of limitation, to use very much the same means. Surely it is no new thing to learn that in warfare both parties have to burn the same quality of gunpowder, and that even the cats when they fight all have to scratch with claws that are very much alike. Do such remarks explain or tend to diminish or to end the conflicts in question?
How insignificant is this way of studying the conflict of egoism and altruism, we shall see if we take yet other illustrations. In the sense of the foregoing comparison of egoism and altruism, even a pirate, in his treatment of merchant vessels, would have to be moderately altruistic; namely, he had better not try to do harm to a merchant vessel that is too well armed for his force to overcome it. On the contrary, his egoism will in this case counsel him unselfishly to let it prosper in its own way. Nay, he may even try to speed it on its course, if it appears disposed to change roles and to attack him. He may say that in just this case he thinks that this merchantman ought to have peace, and to be preserved from injury. The other alternative would just here increase his own bill for repairs, or might ​make his own existence less happy, or might even bring him to the gallows. The happiness of the crew of the merchantman is therefore just now an object of concern for him, as perhaps furthering his own. So he may be willing to compromise the difficulty, even if it should cost him a large sum to persuade the belligerent captain of the armed merchantman to let him alone. Thus he might even add quite a fortune to what the merchantman’s captain and crew already have of good things, and this would surely be very marked altruism. Thus egoism and altruism may oppose each other, and thus, by careful calculation, their opposing claims may be balanced! Or yet again, suppose that a robber meets me in the highway, and egoistically demands my purse. If now I should manage to disarm him, to present a pistol to his head, and to ask him to accompany me to the nearest town, evidently the claims of altruism would for that man have a considerably stronger emphasis than they had the moment before. He would now be willing not merely to live and let live in peace for the present; he would not merely be delighted to recognize my rights of property and to leave me free to enjoy them; but he would undoubtedly be glad to increase my happiness by giving me anything of value that he might have about him, or any information of value to me that I might desire, if by such means he could get me to let him go free. A great altruist would my robber now be, however great his egoism just before.
Now do such discussions of the claims of egoism and altruism mean anything for the moralist? But ​if somebody tells us of the altruism that leads a man to advocate good drainage lest he himself may have a fever, of the altruism that pays one’s debts to the sole end that one may get further credit, of the sublime unselfishness that makes a man civil even to his rivals, because civility in these days is a social requirement, — what have all these wondrous virtues to do in constituting the moral value of altruism as a disposition, more than have the virtues just illustrated? We have two dispositions in us: one ordering us to respect our neighbor as such, to labor in his behalf because he exists and needs help; the other demanding that we regard him as a mere instrument for our personal pleasure. Only the dispositions as such concern the moralist. Surely in fundamental ethics we are discussing what we ought to aim at, not how we can get our aims, so long at least as we confine ourselves to the general principles. Applied morality may have much to say of means. But of principles, this balancing of means can tell us nothing. The means are the physical accidents, nothing more. What we want to know is whether egoism as an aim is morally the worthiest aim, or whether altruism is a morally better aim. And we ask not yet how, if one’s aim is egoistic, he can most successfully be selfish, but only whether one’s aim ought to be selfish, and in how far. To tell us that if we are sensible and selfish we shall avoid having too much trouble with our fellows, is not to tell us that our aims ought to be altruistic, but only that sensible selfish men are not fools. To tell us that if we are wise and altruistic we shall avoid wasting ​our own powers profitlessly, and shall try to preserve our own health, and to cultivate our own wits in useful ways, all this is to tell us that unselfish wise men are not fanatics. It may be useful to say this, but it is not useful to the discussion of fundamental moral doctrines. We want to know, for the first, not how successfully to be altruistic, or selfish, but why the effort to be altruistic or to be selfish is morally right or wrong.
IV.
If now such comparisons of the claims of altruism and egoism throw no light on the fundamental moral questions, what shall we say of the chance that the “conflict” may be explained or diminished by any proof that the evolution of our race will tend in time to diminish, or even to extinguish, the opposition? If some one shows us that by and by the most selfish being in the social order will find it his own bliss to give as much bliss as he can to everybody else, so that men shall all be even as the people at a successful party, getting pleasure as freely as they give it, and giving it because they get it: and if such predictions seem to anybody to help us to know what duty is, then what can we say in reply, save to wonder at the insight that sees the connection between all these facts and our present duty? If a society ever does grow up in which there are no moral conflicts, nothing but a tedious cooing of bliss from everybody, then in that society there will be no moral questions asked. But none the less we ask such. If the people of that day no longer ​distinguish egoism from altruism, they may all be blessed: but what is that to us? We ask, What ought we to do? We learn in answer that the people of the future will feel no need to ask that question. We desire that duty be defined. We learn in answer that if men ever get perfect, the sense of obligation will vanish, so that nobody will question: What is duty? at all. This may be magnificent, but it is not ethics.
For what do we really learn by hearing about the society of the future? Only that, in the time coming, there will be such and such freedom from moral problems? Do we then also learn that we ought to do our best to bring about that reign of peace? Not at all, for we are sure that we shall never live to see that day; and we cannot know why we should work for it so long as we are still in doubt about the value of selfishness. Do we learn that we ought to conform as nearly as is possible to the rules that will govern men in that ideal state? But how then do we learn that? Is it because the coming form of conduct will be the “highest form of adjustment of acts to ends,” as the modern apostles of evolution teach that it will be? Nay, though we do accept most confidently all that these apostles teach about the future, since surely they must know about it, we still miss anything of moral significance in these physical facts. For why is this coming state the highest? Does any one say: Because it will come at the end of the physical process of evolution? Nay then, if every more advanced state is to be more acceptable, by such reasoning the sprouting potato ​or the incubating egg would always be more acceptable than the fresh potato or the fresh egg. Highest, as last, or as most complex, or even as most permanent, cannot be in meaning identical with the morally highest that we want defined for us. We ought to work for the realization of that far-off state, if at all, then, because we see it to be, not merely the last in point of time, but also actually the best, and that for some other reason than this physical one. But once more then, why is it best? And why ought we to try to realize it? Because in that state, every individual will be happiest? But then we want to know what we now are to do, and we see that this future happiness will be at present for us unattainable. If we were in that state we should be happy. But it is not at all plain that, by trying to approach it, we shall now be making ourselves any happier. And why should we do anything unselfish?
Evolution then, as a mere prospect, throws no light on the real and fundamental meaning of duty. If we know what we are to try to do, then we can judge whether we ought to help or to hinder evolution as a means to that end. But unless we know our duty otherwise, there is nothing in the mere physical fact of evolution that indicates what is morally higher or lower, better or worse. Why should I work for future ages, if it is not already quite plain, apart from any knowledge of evolution, that I ought to do what I can just now for my brother here?
After all, however, it is another aspect of evolution upon which nowadays most stress is laid in ​ethics. It is said that, the future aside, evolution has made us what we now are, and, in particular, has formed our society, and us for society. Hence not only is our welfare in fact best served by a wise altruism, but this fact is plain to us in our very organization and instincts. Therefore while throughout our aim is our happiness, our nature has been so organized by generations of social evolution as to make pretty certain that our happiness is already dependent on our good character as social beings. Therefore the doctrine of evolution shows that selfishness must itself become even in our day altruistic if it would be successful.
Is this aspect of evolution any more ethical than the other? That is, does it show us, not the means, but the moral End? We must deny that it does. To be sure, if we never actually felt any conflict between egoism and altruism as dispositions, then indeed for us just that ethical problem would not exist. But we do feel a conflict. And since for us our selfishness is not altruistic in aim, it is quite useless to try to make the warring impulses one by declaring that a perfectly enlightened selfishness, even in our own society, would be altruistic, not indeed in aim, but in consequences. For, in the first place, that would actually be a false statement for our present social condition; since it is still quite possible for a clever selfish man to live very comfortably, by somehow legally wronging and oppressing others. And, in the second place, if the statement were true, it would be ethically worthless. For if good treatment of others is uniformly the behavior that is, selfishly viewed, the ​most advantageous, the man who acts upon that principle is still selfish, not altruistic at all, and he has not solved for himself the conflict between the two principles, save by utterly disregarding the principle of altruism. If altruism were the only goodness, then altruism of aim would be goodness still, whatever the selfish consequences. If altruism needs to be limited in any way by selfishness, then the limitation must still be a matter of aim, not of accidental result. Altruism as a means to selfish ends would however be no aim at all, but only an accidental tool. If circumstances varied, it would be cast aside, while the selfish aim itself remained constant.
J. S. Mill, following others, tried to distinguish the motive from the intent of an act. According to this distinction, a selfish act would be altruistic by intent, if there was in it the deliberate purpose to make somebody happy, however selfish the motive of the act. So it would be altruism to be deliberately and selfishly just. But this distinction, however useful for some purposes, is for our purpose worthless. The question is: What in the act belongs to the man, and what is this part of the act worth? Now whatever belongs not to the actor, but to the conditions under which he works, is morally insignificant. For it is what we have called the physical accident of his surroundings. But intent, apart from motive, seems to be just such a physical accident; for intent, apart from motive, must relate, not to the real aim as such, but only to the means. A man aims to be selfish. If now he lives where his selfishness requires him to feed and clothe his enemy, ​he will, if enlightened, do so, and deliberately too. And he will show in the act just as much and just as little charity as he would have shown had he lived where selfishness was best served by killing his enemy, and had he killed him. The intent, apart from the motive of the man, can have reference only to the means by which he seeks to get his ultimate aim. And such intent relates to accidental matters. If by a physical accident the selfish man grows up where you must speak politely to your antagonist, and treat him with great show of respect, then the selfish man will deliberately, and with conscious intent, do so; and if he grows up where you challenge your antagonist to a duel, he will possibly try that way of getting rid of an enemy; and if he lives among the cannibals, the selfish man, no more or less selfish than in the other cases, only by training more brutal in tastes, will torture and eat his antagonist. And if the doctrine of evolution shows that one of these forms of “adaptation” is more complete than another, or proves to us that we personally shall be most prudent in adopting one only of the possible courses, all this can in no wise tell us what aim in conduct is morally best, but only what means most exhaustively accomplish the selfish purposes of a civilized man. So intent is morally valuable only in connection with motive.
It is hardly worth while to dwell longer on the curious devices by which certain defenders of the application of the hypothesis of evolution to questions of fundamental ethics have tried to establish that the truths of evolution teach us that we ought ​to do right. The whole undertaking resembles that of a man who should try to show us that the truth of the law of gravitation clearly indicates that we all ought to sit down. What is evident or doubtful apart from the law of evolution, cannot, in this field, be proved or disproved by the law. Shall we say: “Do good to thy neighbor to-day, because evolution tends to bring into existence a race of future beings who will do good?” To say this is to say something utterly irrelevant. What do we care about remote posterity, unless we already care about our neighbors as they are? Or shall we say: “Do good to thy neighbor because evolution has made thee a social being, whose instincts lead thee to desire thy neighbor’s good?” To say this is to say what is only very imperfectly true. One’s instincts often lead him to take much selfish delight in thwarting his neighbor. If it were true universally and strictly, it would not show us why to do right, nor yet what is right. For it is not obviously a fundamental ethical doctrine that we ought to follow an instinct as such. And if we follow an instinct because we find it pleasing, our aim is still not to do any right save what pleases us personally. And the whole wisdom of the doctrine of evolution would be reduced to the assurance that we ought to do as we like, with due regard to prudence. Shall we then say: “Do good, because the social order that has evolved is too strong for thee, and will hurt thee unless thou submittest to it?” Still one has the selfish motive insisted upon, and morality is still only prudence. And the doctrine will still have to ​admit that whenever one can outwit society prudently, and can gain for himself his selfish aims by anti-social but for him in this case safe means, then and there the selfish man may do this anti-social thing if he likes, the doctrine, with all its good motives, being unable to show why not. For it will not do to resort to some such subterfuge as this, and to say: “A man’s advantage depends upon the prosperity of the whole. But anti-social acts ultimately tend to weaken society. Hence they ultimately tend to diminish the prosperity of the whole, and therefore tend to harm the selfish individual.” All this is irrelevant, in case the social consequences cannot return upon the selfish individual’s head during his lifetime. The wasteful owners of great forests in our western mountains, the great and oppressive capitalists that crush rivals and outwit the public, the successful speculators, the national leaders whose possession of the biggest battalions enables them to demand of weaker neighbors unjust sacrifices, all these may listen in scorn to talk about their prosperity as dependent upon that of society, their enemies and victims included. “We eat the fruit,” they can say. “To be sure we consume it by eating, and we like to waste it so long as we ourselves profit by the waste, and we could neither eat it nor waste it if there were no fruit; but there is enough to last us and our children for our lifetimes. After us the social famine, but for others, not for us.” The now famous reply ascribed to one of our great railroad kings when, some time since, he was asked about the “accommodation of the public” by a certain train, ​well illustrates our point. “Damn the public,” said the great servant and master of the traveling world. If he really did not say that, very likely there are those who would have meant it. And may the evolutionist condemn them solely on his own grounds?
Or finally, shall the doctrine retreat behind an ancient maxim, and state itself thus: “Evolution shows us what are the ultimate tendencies of acts; but no act ought to be committed which belongs to a class of acts whose general tendency is bad”? Would not this be a lamentable surrender of the whole position? Yet such a surrender is found in one or two passages of the book that is nowadays supposed best to represent the doctrine that we have been criticising in the foregoing, namely, in Mr. Spencer’s “Data of Ethics.” The physical facts of evolution are to give us our ideal. How? By telling us what in the long run, for the world at large, produces happiness. But if my individual happiness in the concrete case is hindered by what happens to be known to help in the long run towards the production of general happiness, how shall the general rule be applicable to my case? Mr. Spencer replies, in effect, that the concrete consequences for individuals must not be judged, but only the general tendency of the act. Happiness is the ultimate end; but in practice the “general conditions of happiness” must be the proximate end. But how is this clear? If I know in a given case what will make me happy, and if the means to my happiness are not the general ones at all, but, in this concrete case, something conflicting therewith, why should I not do as I please? ​Because, Mr. Spencer says, the concrete case must be tested by the general law of Evolution. But once more, why? The only answer is the principle, which Mr. Spencer sometimes tacitly assumes, sometimes very grudgingly acknowledges, sometimes seems to claim as his peculiar property, namely, the well-known Kantian principle, that nothing should be done which we could not wish to see done universally, or that the rule of the single act ought to he a rule adapted to serve as an universal rule for all rational beings. But if this maxim is essential to the foundation of a moral system, then how poor the pretense that the law of evolution gives us any foundation for ethics at all. The facts of evolution stand there, mere dead realities, wholly without value as moral guides, until the individual assumes his own moral principle, namely, his ideal determination to do nothing that a person considering the order of the world as a whole and desiring universal happiness would condemn, from the point of view of the general tendencies of acts. Grant that principle, and you have an ideal aim for action. Then a knowledge of the course of evolution will be useful, just as a knowledge of astronomy is useful to a navigator. But astronomy does not tell us why we are to sail on the water, but only how to find our way. With Kant’s principle assumed, we already have attained, apart from any physical doctrine of evolution, the essentials of an ethical doctrine to start with; and we need no doctrine of evolution to found this ethical doctrine, but need it only to tell us the means. But if we have not already this Kantian principle, ​then it is hard indeed to see what the doctrine of evolution can do to help us to get it. Mr. Spencer seems to forget that a doctrine of Means is not a doctrine of Ends.
In sum then, either the fundamental moral distinctions are clear apart from the physical fact of evolution, or the physical fact cannot illustrate for us the distinctions that we do not previously know. If there is a real moral conflict between egoism and altruism, then this conflict must concern the aims of these two dispositions, not the accidental outcome that we reach, nor the more or less variable means that we employ in following the dispositions. And any effort to reconcile the two tendencies by showing that through evolution, or otherwise, it has become necessary for an altruistic aim to be reached by seemingly selfish means, or for a selfish purpose to be gained by seemingly altruistic devices, — any such effort has no significance for ethics. If the question were: “Shall we buy mutton or beef at the market to-day?” it would surely be a strange answer to the question, or “reconciliation” of the alternatives, if one replied, “But whichever you do you must go over the same road to get to the market.” How then are we helped by knowing that, in our society, altruism and egoism, these two so bitterly opposed moral aims, have very often to hide their conflicts under a use of very much the same outward show of social conformity.
There is indeed no doubt that all the knowledge we may get about the facts of evolution will help us to judge of the means by which we can realize the ​moral ideals that we independently form. But the ideals themselves we apply to the course of evolution as tests of its worth, or hold as aims to be realized through knowledge of nature. We do not get them from studying the course of nature as a mere process. There is no doubt of the reality and of the vast importance of the physical fact of evolution. Its ethical importance, however, has been, we hold, misunderstood. Evolution is for ethics a doctrine not of ends, but of the means that we can use. In fact, there is an applied ethic of evolution, but no fundamental ethical doctrine based upon evolution. Those who investigate evolution are doing much to further the realization of ethical ideals, but they cannot make or find for us our ethical ideals. They show us where lies the path to an already desired goal. For them to try to define the goal merely by means of their physical discoveries, is a great mistake. It can lead only to such labored efforts as we have here been criticising, efforts to prove some such opinion as that altruism is a form of selfishness, or that selfishness is the only possible altruism. Whether we are just in fancying that these latter efforts are really identical with the actual efforts of any recent evolutionists, the reader must judge for himself. Altruism we must, at all events, justify in another way.
V.
But now let us turn from those who define unselfishness as a useful means to a selfish end, and let us consider the effort to make pure unselfishness a ​self-evident goal of conduct, by founding unselfishness on the direct revelation of the emotion of Pity. Here, as before, we shall meet with the skeptical criticism that the mere physical fact of the existence of certain conditions is no proof of the validity of an ideal moral demand. Just as the physical fact that a clever self-seeker must pretend to be unselfish, and must outwardly produce effects that benefit others, is no foundation for a genuinely unselfish ideal, just so the presence of a pitiful impulse, a mere fact of human nature, is no foundation for an ideal rule of conduct. The feeling is capricious, just as the social conditions that render public spirit and generosity the best selfish policy are capricious. As the selfish man would behave with open selfishness in case he were where unselfishness in outward conduct no longer was worth to him the trouble, even so the pitiful man would, merely as pitiful, be cruelly selfish if cruel selfishness, instead of generous deeds, could satisfy his impulse. In fact, he often is cruelly selfish; and if sympathy were always unselfish, still, as a feeling, it is a mere accidental fact of human nature. So again, the effort to found a moral ideal on a natural fact will fail. But let us look closer.
Schopenhauer is the best modern representative of the view that Pity or sympathetic emotion is the foundation of right conduct. In pity he finds the only unselfish principle in man, and he insists that pity is a tendency not reducible to any other more selfish emotion of our nature. He finds it necessary to refute as an error the oft repeated opinion that ​“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 ​passionately in love, and each with a different maiden. Let each one find in his way a rival, to whom external circumstances have given a very decided advantage. Both shall have made up their minds to put each his own rival out of the world; and both shall be secure against any discovery, or even suspicion. But when each for himself sets about the preparations for the murder, both of them, after some inner conflict, shall give up the attempt. They shall render account to us, plainly and truthfully, of why they have thus decided. Now what account Caius shall render, the reader shall decide as he pleases. Let Caius be prevented by religious scruples, by the will of God, by the future punishment, by the coming judgment, or by anything of that sort. Or let him [with Kant] say: 'I reflected that the maxim of my procedure in this case would not have been fit to serve as an universal rule for all possible rational beings, since I should have used my rival as means and not at the same time as End in himself.' Or let him say with Fichte: 'Every human life is Means or instrument for the realization of the Moral Law; therefore I cannot, without being indifferent to the moral law, destroy one who is destined to contribute to that end.' Or let him say, after Wollaston: 'I have considered that the deed would be the expression of an untrue proposition.' Or let him say, after Hutcheson: 'The moral sense, whose sensations, like those of every other sense, are not further to be explained, has determined me to refrain.' Or let him say, after Adam Smith: 'I foresaw that my deed, if I did it, would arouse no sympathy with me in the spectators of the act.' Or, after Christian Wolff: 'I recognized that I should thereby hinder my own growth towards perfection without helping the growth of anybody else.' Or let him say, after Spinoza: 'Homini nihil utilius homine; ergo, hominem interimere nolui.' ​In short, let him say what he will. But Titus, whose account of himself I reserve for my choice, let him say: ‘When I began to prepare, and so for the moment was busy no longer with my passion, but with my rival, then it became for the first time quite clear to me what now was really to be his fate. But just here pity and compassion overcame me. I grieved for him; my heart would not be put down; I could not do it.’ I ask now every honest and unprejudiced reader, which of the two is the better man? To which of the two would he rather intrust his fate? Which of them was restrained by the purer motive? Where, therefore, lies the principle of moral action?”
What shall we say of this foundation for altruism? Are pity and unselfishness thus shown to be, for the purposes of ethics, identical? Schopenhauer’s suggestion seems attractive, but from the outset doubtful. Let us examine it more carefully.
VI.
This Pity is, at all events, for the first just an impulse, no more; so at least, as we learn, it appears in the unreflective man. “Nature,” Schopenhauer tells us, has “planted in the human heart that wondrous disposition through which the sorrows of one are felt by the other, and from which comes the voice that, according to the emergency, calls to one ‘Spare,’ to another, ‘Help,’ and calls urgently and with authority. Surely there was to be expected from the aid thus originating more for the prosperity of all ​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: “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. ​But then does this sentiment exhaust for Schopenhauer the whole meaning of pity? In no wise. Not for this sole reason is pity the whole basis of morality, namely, because it is the only non-egoistic impulse in us; but besides this reason, there is the second reason used by Schopenhauer to give special dignity to pity. This other reason is in fact the deeper basis for him of pity as the principle of conduct. Pity is namely a revelation in concrete form of a great fundamental truth, the one above referred to, the great fact of the ultimate and metaphysical Oneness of all sentient beings. Because pity reveals this, therefore has this sentiment an authority, a depth and a significance that a sentiment, merely as such, could never have.
About this aspect of the matter, Schopenhauer instructs us more than once in his writings. A few quotations from one discussion will serve for present illustration.
“The difference between my own and another’s person seems for experience an absolute difference. The difference of space that separates me from my neighbor, separates me also from his joy and pain. But on the other hand, it must still be remarked, that the knowledge that we have of ourselves is no complete and clear knowledge.” . . . “Whereon is founded all variety and all multiplicity of beings? On space and time; through these alone is variety or multiplicity possible, since what is many can only be conceived as coexistent or as successive. Because the many like things are called individuals, I therefore call space and time, as making possible the existence of a multitude ​of individuals, the principium individuationis.” . . . “If anything is undoubtedly true in the explanations that Kant’s wonderful insight has given to the world, then surely it is the Transcendental Æsthetics.” . . . “According to this doctrine, space and time . . . belong only to the phenomena. . . . But if the world in itself knows not space or time, then of necessity the world in itself knows nothing of multitude.” . . . “Hence only one identical Being manifests itself in all the numberless phenomena of this world of sense. And conversely, what appears as a multitude, in space or in time, is not a real thing in itself, but only a phenomenon.” . . . “Consequently that view is not false that abolishes the distinction between Self and Not-self; rather is the opposed view the false one.” . . . “But the former is the view that we have found as the real basis of the phenomenon of pity, so that in fact pity is the expression of it. This view then is the metaphysical basis of ethics, and consists in this: that one individual directly recognizes in another his own very self, his own true essence.”
These passages from Schopenhauer are, as one sees, interesting not only because they defend the emotion of pity as the foundation of morals, but also because they offer an interesting suggestion of an aspect of the matter not before noticed in our study. Like so many of Schopenhauer’s suggestions, this one is neither wholly original, nor very complete in itself. But it is so expressed as to attract attention; it is helpful to us by its very incompleteness. It is stimulating, although it proves nothing. This modern Buddhism brings to our minds the query (which goes ​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. ​We are still not concerned for Schopenhauer’s metaphysic, which, God knows, was a rotten enough tub for a wise man to go down to the sea in. But in his character as keeper of beautiful curiosities, Schopenhauer shows us in his literary museum, that is built on the dry land, many very useful thoughts; and we need not follow him out onto the great deep at present. But we note with interest this suggestion that he adds to his theory of pity. Is that suggestion worth anything? Is pity in fact a detection of an illusion? And does this illusion constitute the basis of selfishness? Perhaps that suggestion will be needed in a future chapter. Meanwhile, however, we have at present to do only with pity as a mere emotion. Surely if pity does discover for us any illusion in selfishness, then it must be a particular form of pity to which this function belongs. For much of pity simply illustrates this illusion. We cannot then do better than first to distinguish the selfish from the altruistic forms of what we popularly include under the one name Pity, or, to use the more general word, Sympathy. We shall have to go over old and commonplace ground, but we need to; for the illusion of selfishness, to be detected, needs also to be illustrated.
VII.
When one sees his neighbor in pain, does one of necessity come to know that pain as such, to realize its true nature as it is in his neighbor? Or does one often fall into an illusion about that pain, ​regarding 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 ​one at all. It is very simply the precept: “Get rid of the pain that your neighbor causes you to feel.” Sympathy with pain may make you tremble, grow faint, feel choked, weep; and all these sudden emotions are followed perhaps by long-enduring melancholy. All this causes you to forget the reality of the other’s pain. This personal trouble of yours, felt in stronger cases in your body as a physical disturbance, as something unnerving, prostrating, overwhelming, turns your reflection upon yourself, and you are very apt to ask; What am I to do to be free from it? So to ask is already to begin to forget your neighbor. The pain that his pain caused has simply become your pain. You are, even through your pity, bound fast in an illusion. For there are three ways of removing this pain, and of satisfying for you the sympathy that caused it. One way, and often a very hard one, puzzling to follow, full of responsibility and of blunders, would be taken if you did your best, perseveringly and calmly, to get your neighbor out of his trouble. That would doubtless take a long time, you would never be adequately thanked for your trouble, and you might very easily blunder and do harm instead of good to him, thus causing in the end yet more sympathetic pain for you, coupled this time with remorse. The second way is to get used to the sight of pain, so that you no longer feel any sympathetic suffering. The third way is generally the easiest of all. That is to go away from the place, and forget all about the sad business as soon as possible. That is the way that most sensitive people take in dealing with most of ​the suffering that they meet. The first way gives you the most of hard work to do. The second way, by dulling your sensibilities, makes you less alive to the pleasures that are to be gained in the company of happy men. The stern man, who has seen so much suffering as to be indifferent to it, may be less alive to the bliss of sympathy that gentler natures come to know, in refined and peaceful society. By far the most inviting way is the third. It prevents you from growing callous, cold, and harsh. It leaves you sensitive, appreciative, tender-hearted, freshly sympathetic, an admirable and humane being. But it also saves you from the pangs that to refined natures must be the most atrocious, the pangs of contemplating a world of sorrow which your best efforts can but very imperfectly help. People with a delicate sense of the beautiful surely cannot endure to go about seeing all sorts of filthy and ugly miseries, and if they can endure it, will they not be much happier, as well as more refined, more delicate in taste, much higher in the scale of beautiful cultivation, if they do not try to endure it, but keep themselves well surrounded by happy and ennobling companions? For the sight of pain is apt to make you coarse; it might degrade you even to the level of the peevish sufferer himself. Does a refined soul desire that? No one is a duller, a less stimulating, a less ennobling companion, than the average man when he is suffering atrociously. Pain brings out his native brutishness. He is abject, he curses, he behaves perhaps like a wild beast. Or he lies mute and helpless, showing no interest in what you do for ​him, hating you possibly, just because you are the nearest creature to him. His gratitude is apt to be a myth. So long as he yet suffers, he does not appreciate what you are doing for him, for why should he thank you while you make him no better? And if you can cure him, what then? Nobody can remember very clearly a very sharp pain once over. Hence he will underrate your services. You can much better appreciate your moderate trouble in helping him than he can afterwards appreciate the very great and agonizing trouble from which you saved him. One forgets in part one’s greatest anguish, one’s most dangerous diseases. The worst troubles are not favorable to clear memory. Above all, however, his memory will be weak for what you did in his case. He will shock you afterwards by having failed to notice that you took any serious trouble in his behalf at all. But, if he was sick and you nursed him, he will remember very well how you harassed him as you nursed him. He will remember a creaking door or an ill-cooked steak, when he forgets your cups of cold water, your sleepless nights, your toil to secure silence when he needed it, your patience when he complained, your sacrifice of all other present aims in life on his account. All that he will forget, not because he is a bad man, but because he is an ordinary creature whom pain debased and corrupted, so that he became hardly a fit companion for an elevated and refined soul like yours. He is only human. If you were an average man yourself, you would treat your friends that aided you in your worst suffering after much the ​same fashion. It is well if the sufferer and his helper do not begin a quarrel that will last a lifetime, all because of the meddlesome self-sacrifice of the officious helper. For to the wretched any help is apt to seem officious, because no help is immediately and unconditionally successful.
So then, if you are tender-hearted, does tender-heartedness dictate all this waste of sympathy? Plainly not. Tender-heartedness need not say: My neighbor must be relieved. Tender-heartedness, as a personal affection of yours, says only: Satisfy me. And you can satisfy this affection if you forget about all those degraded wretches that are doomed to suffer, and associate with those blessed ones whose innocent joy shall make your tender heart glad of its own tenderness. Let us rejoice with those that do rejoice, and those that weep, let them take care of themselves in everlasting oblivion. Such is the dictate of tender-hearted selfishness; and our present point is the not at all novel thought, so often elaborated in George Eliot’s novels, the thought that, the tenderer the heart, the more exclusively selfish becomes this dictate of tender-heartedness. Very sensitive people, who cannot overcome their sensitiveness, are perforce selfish in this world of pain. They must forget that there is suffering. Their pity makes them cruel. They cannot bear the sight of suffering; they must shut the door upon it. If he is a Dives, such a man must first of all insist that the police shall prevent people like Lazarus, covered with sores, from lying in plain sight at the gate. Such men must treat pain as, in these days of ​plumbing, we treat filth. We get the plumber and the carpenter to hide it so well that even our civilized nostrils shall not be offended. That we call modern improvement in house-building. Even so we get the police to hide suffering from us; and, when that help fails, or is inapplicable, we appeal to the natural sense of decency in the sufferers, and demand, on the ground of common courtesy, that they shall not intrude their miseries upon us. Thus we cultivate a tender sympathy for the most delicate emotions of the human heart, as we never could do if we let suffering, as our forefathers used to let filth, lie about in plain sight. Ignore another’s suffering, and then it practically becomes non-existent. So says selfishness.
VIII.
If we ourselves are very happy, our lack of willingness to consider suffering may become greater and greater as we get happier. Nobody is colder in shutting out the thought of misery than a joyous man in a joyous company. “If there be anywhere any wretched people (which we doubt) let them keep well away from this place.” That is the voice of the spirit of overflowing sympathetic joy, as Schiller so finely expresses it in the hymn an die Freude: —
    “He who, proving, hath discovered,
       What it is a friend to own.
    O’er whom woman’s love hath hovered.
       Let him here his bliss make known:
    Yea, if but one living being,
       On the earth is his to-day, — ​
    And who ne’er has known such, fleeing,
       Let him weep his grief away.”
“Joy,” says the enthusiastic young Schiller in this rhapsody, “Joy was bestowed on the worm.” “All beings drink joy at Mother Nature’s breast.” Delightful generosity of the happy man! But what do the crushed worms think about it? “Whoso hath a friend,” — but what of the poor wretches in the slums of great cities, beaten, starved, imprisoned, cheated, and cheating, starved and imprisoned again, all through their lifetimes? How many souls do these poor Ishmaelites call their own? But of whom shall the joyful man think, of whom does he or can he think? Of these? No, it is the tendency of selfish joy to build up its own pretty world of fancy. Everything in that world, from cherub to worm, has joy’s sympathy, but only in so far as it is also joyous. Seid umschlungen Millionen! dieser Kuss der ganzen Welt! But in fact dieser Kuss is intended only for the happy world, which in the illusion, beautiful, but yet cruel, of the innocently joyous man, seems to be the whole world. Much good will such kisses do to the Millionen that groan and writhe! Joy ignores them, cannot believe them real.
Such then are some of the dictates of sympathy, ​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 ​first. The dread of the sight of pain may be made to pass away by enough of inevitable experience. But the selfish love of the office of comforter grows with the sense of our personal importance, and with the number of times when we are called upon to exercise our powers. There are people who are always fretful and disconsolate unless they know of somebody who very badly needs consoling. Then they are calm and happy, for they are sure that they are admirable as comforters, they feel themselves the centre of an admiring neighborhood, they are plying their noble avocation in a graceful fashion. This type is surely no very uncommon one. Such people are apt to be intolerable companions for you unless you have a broken leg, or a fever, or a great bereavement. Then they find you interesting, because you are wretched. They nurse you like saints; they speak comfortably to you like angels. They hate to give the little comfort that can be given from day to day to those who are enduring the ordinary vexations of healthy and prosaic life. They rejoice to find some one overwhelmed with woe. The happy man is to them a worthless fellow. High temperature is needed to soften their hearts. They would be miserable in Paradise, at the sight of so much tedious contentment; but they would leap for joy if they could but hear of a lost soul to whom a drop of water could be carried. To them the most blessed truth of Scripture is found in the passage: “For the poor ye have always with you.” Yea, blessed are the merciful, for they shall never lack work. They shall be like the sculptor, delighting in the ​rough blocks of marble that contain his beloved statues. For them the world will doubtless have always a plenty of blocks.
These are not the vulgarly malevolent. Yet they would be disconsolate altogether if evil were to cease. They regard misery as their special property; hence they would be very much disappointed to hear that Paradise had come again, and that misery had been abolished. And we are speaking now, not of the professional enthusiasm that must make the physician interested in the diseases that he studies, but of the pure delight in pity that distinguishes certain unprofessional people whose lives would be almost utterly empty of all joy were their neighbors not subject to serious calamities. Surely it is not this sort of pity that overcomes the illusion of selfishness. Rather does such pity well illustrate that illusion.
IX.
Sympathy then, as an emotion, is not always altruistic, but frequently very selfish. It does not always overthrow, but often strengthens, selfishness. And so deceitful an emotion cannot be trusted with the office of giving moral insight. In so far as pity ever does involve the detection of an illusion of selfishness, we may have occasion to speak of it hereafter. For on that side, Schopenhauer’s thought still looks attractive. But if we view pity with reference not to insight but to emotion, if we ask whether a given act was unselfish because it was pitiful, then we can already answer that, in so far as unselfishness ​constitutes morality, the pitiful character of an act does not insure its unselfishness, and hence not its morality. Schopenhauer’s own typical example, quoted above, is indeed interesting, but not conclusive as to this question. “I pitied him,” says the lover who has refrained from slaying his rival. “Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it,” says Lady Macbeth. Possibly Lady Macbeth’s pity was good in itself, but not quite sufficient in quantity. But her words remind us of what the lover might do, if only pity stood in the way of the murder that he desired to commit. He might get somebody else to take care of the whole business, preparations and all, and so save his own tender emotions. In fact, however, Schopenhauer’s young lover has something more than a mere emotion of pity in him.
But so far as we have considered sympathy, we have had but another illustration of the difficulty with which we are dealing. Even if sympathy were always unselfish, never capricious, perfectly clear in its dictates, there would remain the other objection. Sympathy is a mere fact of a man’s emotional nature. To an unsympathetic man, how shall you demonstrate the ideals that you found upon the feeling of sympathy? And so one returns to the old difficulty. You have an ideal whereby you desire to judge the world. But this ideal you found in its turn on the fact that somebody has a certain sort of emotion. Any one who has not this emotion you declare to be an incompetent judge. And so your last foundation for the ideal is something whose worth is to be demonstrated solely by the fact that it exists. ​Thus in this and in the last chapter, in general and in particular discussions, we have found the one problem recurring. The ideal is to have an ideal foundation, yet we seem always to give it a foundation in some reality. And if we then look about us, we always find some skeptic saying, either that he does not feel sure of the existence of any such reality, or that he doubts whether it means what we say that it means, or, again, that in any case there are other people, who have found other realities, and whose moral principles, founded on these other realities, are in deadly opposition to ours. The idealist of our preliminary discussion on the methods of ethical inquiry has so far met with numerous misfortunes. He has continually been enticed over to a sort of realistic position, and then just the same arguments that he used against the realist are used against him. If, however, true to himself, he assaults the realism of the modern descendants of Hobbes with the argument that all their physical hypotheses are worthless without ideals, then he hears the challenge to show an ideal that is not his whim, and that is not founded on a physical doctrine. There seems no refuge for him as yet but to turn skeptic himself.
* ↑ Grundlage der Moral, p. 211 (2d ed.).
* ↑ Grundlage der Moral, p. 231.
* ↑ Grundlage der Moral, p. 245.
* ↑ “Discours sur I’origine de l’inégalite.” Quoted in theGrundlage der Moral, p. 247.
* ↑ Grundlage der Moral, p. 267.
* ↑ Grundlage, p. 267.
* ↑ Grundlage, p. 270.
* ↑ Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen Eines Freundes Freund zu sein, Wer ein holdes Weib errungen Mische seinen Jubel ein! Ja, — wer auch nur eine Seele Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund! Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle, Weinend sich aus diesem Bund.