Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/125

100 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.

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, —