Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/111

86 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