Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 1.djvu/528

486 THE WORLD AS WILL. bk. iv. own, and this almost always constitutes the greatest part ; sympathy shows itself in the sincere participation in his joy and grief, and the disinterested sacrifices made in respect of the latter. Thus Spinoza says: Benevolentia nihil aliud est, quam cupiditas ex commiseratione orta (Eth. iii. pr. 27, cor. 3, schol.) As a confirmation of our paradoxical proposition it may be observed that the tone and words of the language and caresses of pure love, entirely coincide with the tones of sympathy; and we may also remark in passing that in Italian sympathy and true love are denoted by the same word pietà.

This is also the place to explain one of the most striking peculiarities of human nature, weeping, which, like laughter, belongs to those qualities which distinguish man from the brutes. Weeping is by no means a direct expression of pain, for it occurs where there is very little pain. In my opinion, indeed, we never weep directly on account of the pain we experience, but always merely on account of its repetition in reflection. We pass from the felt pain, even when it is physical, to a mere idea of it, and then find our own state so deserving of sympathy that we are firmly and sincerely convinced that if another were the sufferer, we would be full of sympathy, and love to relieve him. But now we ourselves are the object of our own sympathy; with the most benevolent disposition we are ourselves most in need of help; we feel that we suffer more than we could see another suffer; and in this very complex frame of mind, in which the directly felt suffering only comes to perception by a doubly circuitous route, imagined as the suffering of another, sympathised with as such, and then suddenly perceived again as directly our own, — in this complex frame of mind, I say, Nature relieves itself through that remarkable physical conflict. Weeping is accordingly sympathy with our own selves, or sympathy directed back on its source. It is therefore conditional upon the capacity for love and sympathy, and also upon imagination. Therefore