Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/117

92 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