Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/171

Rh attributes te commiseration: he, who would thereby make us believe in his great announcement that pity— the very pity so imperfectly observed and so badly described by him—is the source of all and every former and future moral action, for the very sake of those faculties which he had erroneously imputed to it. What is it really that distinguishes people without compassion from the compassionate ones? Above all, to give but a rough sketch, they have not the susceptible imagination of fear, the nice faculty for scenting danger; neither is their vanity so easily offended if something should happen which they might prevent (their cautious pride bids them not meddle uselessly with other people's affairs; may, they cling to the belief that everybody should help himself and play his own cards). Besides they are, in most cases, more hardened to the enduring of pain than the compassionate ones; it, therefore, does not seem so very unfair to them, since they have suffered, that others should suffer. Lastly, the state of softheartedness to them is as painful as the state of stoic equanimity to the compassionate; they bestow on it words of depreciation and think their manliness and cold valour thereby endangered, they conceal the tear from others and wipe it off, full of anger with themselves. Their selfishness differs from that of the compassionate ; but to call them, in the highest sense, evil, and the compassionate ones good, is nothing but a moral fashion, which is having its run, as the reverse fashion had its run, and a long run too,