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

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THE WORLD AS WILL.

BK. IV.

own, and ^is almoali . always-nonstituteg.^ the greatest part; sympathy shows iteelf in the sincere^participation in his joy and grief, and the disinterested sacrifices ma5e in respect of the latter. Thus Spinoza says : Benevolentia nihu dlivu est, quam eupiditas ex commiseratione wta (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 pietii.

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 n.ost 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 vnth 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

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men who are either hard-hearted or unimaginative do not weep easily, and weeping is even always regarded as a sign of a certain degree of goodness of character, and disarms anger, because it is felt that whoever can still weep, must necessarily always be capable of love, i.e., sympathy towards others, for this enters in the manner described into the disposition that leads to weeping. The ^cription which Petrarch gives of the rising of his own tears, nMvOly am3~Trurv expressing bis feeling, entirely agrees with the explanation we have given —

“ I VO pensanJo : e nel pensar m’ assale Una pietd si forte di me stesso,

Che mi conduce apesso,

Ad alto lagriinar, ch’i non soleva.”*

What has been said is also confirmed by the fact that children who have been hurt generally do not cry till some one commiserates them; thus not on account of the pain, but on account of the idea of it. When we are moved to tears, not through our own suffering but through that of another, this happens as follows. Either we vividly put ourselves in the place of the sufferer by imagination, or see in his fate the lot of humanity as a whole, and consequently, first of all, our own lot; and thus, in a very roundabout way, it is yet always about ourselves that we weep, sympathy with ourselves which we feel. This seems to be the principal reason of the universal, and thus natural, weeping in the case of death. The mourner does not weep for his loss ; he would be ashamed of such egotistical tears, instead of which he is sometimes ashamed of not weeping. First of all he certainly weeps for the fate of the dead, but he also weeps when, after long, heavy, and incurable suffering, death was to this man a wished-for deliverance. Thus, principally, he is seized with sympathy for the lot of all