The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

p. 484

THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV.

he comes in.. and firm mward conviction, is certain of all virtue and blessedness, ^d is on the dhect road to salyationT^ ~ '

But before I go further, and, as the conclusion of my exposition, show how love, the origin and nature of which we recognised as the penetration of the principium individuationis, leads to salvation, to the entire surrender of the will to live, i.e., of all volition, and also how another path, less soft but more frequented, leads men to the same goal, a paradoxical proposition must first be stated and explained ; not because it is paradoxical, but because it is true, and is necessary to the completeness of the thought I have present. It is this : “ All love {ayairt], earkas) is sympathy.”

§ 67. We have seen how justice proceeds from the penetration of the principium individuationis in a less degree, and how from its penetration in a higher degree there arises goodness of disposition proper, which shows itself as pure, i.e., disinterested love towards others. When now the latter becomes perfect, it places other individuals and their fate completely on a level with itself and its own fate. Further than this it cannot go, for there exists no reason for preferring the individuality of another to its own. Yet the number of other individuals whose whole happiness or life is in danger may outweigh the regard for one’s own particular well-being. In such a case, the character that has attained to the highest goodness and perfect nobility will entirely sacrifice its own well-being, and even its life, for the wellbeing of many others. So died Codrus, and Leonidas, aad Regulus, and Decius Mus, and Arnold von Winkelried; so dies every one who voluntarily and consciously faces certain death for his friends or his country. "TCnS they also stand on the same level who voluntarily submit to suffering and death for maintaining what conduces and rightly belongs to the welfare of all mankind ; that is, for maintaining universal and important trut^ a^p. 485 destroying great errorg. So died Socrates and Giordano Bruno, and so many _a hero of the truth suffered death at the stake at the hands of the priests.

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Now, howeA’er, I must remind the reader, with reference to the paradox stated above, that we found before that suffering is essential to life as a whole, and inseparable from it.

And that we saw that every wish proceeds from a need, from a want, from suffering, and that therefore every satisfaction is only the removal of a pain, and brings no positive happiness ; that the joys certainly lie to the wish, presenting themselves as a positive good, but in truth they have only a negative nature, and are only the end of an evil.

Therefore what goodness, love, and nobleness do for others, is always merely an alleviation of their suffering, and consequently all that can influence them to good deeds and works of love, is simply the knowledge of the suffering of others, which is directly understood from their own suffering and placed on a level with it But it follows from this that pure love (ayaiTf], caritas) is in its nature sympathy ; whether the suffering it mitigates, to which every unsatisfied wish belongs, be great or small.

Therefore we shall have no hesitation, in direct contradiction to Kant, who will only recognise all true goodness and all virtue to be such, if it has proceeded from abstract reflection, and indeed from the conception of duty and of the categorical imperative, and explains felt sympathy as weakness, and by no means virtue, we shall have no hesitation, I say, in direct contradiction to Kant, in saying: the mere concept is for genuine virtue just as unfruitful as it is for genuine art : all true and pure love is sympathy, and all love which is not sympathy is selfishness.

Eptoy is selfishness, ayaTrij is sympathy. Combinations of the two frequently occur. Ipdeed genuine friendship is always a mixture of selfishness and sympathy ; the former lies in the pleasure experienced in the presen^ of the frien^ indiv^ii^lity corresponds to our