rough blocks of marble that contain his beloved statues. For them the world will doubtless have always a plenty of blocks.

These are not the vulgarly malevolent. Yet they would be disconsolate altogether if evil were to cease. They regard misery as their special property; hence they would be very much disappointed to hear that Paradise had come again, and that misery had been abolished. And we are speaking now, not of the professional enthusiasm that must make the physician interested in the diseases that he studies, but of the pure delight in pity that distinguishes certain unprofessional people whose lives would be almost utterly empty of all joy were their neighbors not subject to serious calamities. Surely it is not this sort of pity that overcomes the illusion of selfishness. Rather does such pity well illustrate that illusion.

IX.

Sympathy then, as an emotion, is not always altruistic, but frequently very selfish. It does not always overthrow, but often strengthens, selfishness. And so deceitful an emotion cannot be trusted with the office of giving moral insight. In so far as pity ever does involve the detection of an illusion of selfishness, we may have occasion to speak of it hereafter. For on that side, Schopenhauer's thought still looks attractive. But if we view pity with reference not to insight but to emotion, if we ask whether a given act was unselfish because it was pitiful, then we can already answer that, in so far as unselfishness constitutes morality, the pitiful character of an act does not insure its unselfishness, and hence not its morality. Schopenhauer's own typical example, quoted above, is indeed interesting, but not conclusive as to this question. "I pitied him," says the lover who has refrained from slaying his rival. "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it," says Lady Macbeth. Possibly Lady Macbeth's pity was good in itself, but not quite sufficient in quantity. But her words remind us of what the lover might do, if only pity stood in the way of the murder that he desired to commit. He might get somebody else to take care of the whole business, preparations and all, and so save his own tender emotions. In fact, however, Schopenhauer's young lover has something more than a mere emotion of pity in him.

But so far as we have considered sympathy, we have had but another illustration of the difficulty with which we are dealing. Even if sympathy were always unselfish, never capricious, perfectly clear in its dictates, there would remain the other objection. Sympathy is a mere fact of a man's emotional nature. To an unsympathetic man, how shall you demonstrate the ideals that you found upon the feeling of sympathy? And so one returns to the old difficulty. You have an ideal whereby you desire to judge the world. But this ideal you found in its turn on the fact that somebody has a certain sort of emotion. Any one who has not this emotion you declare to be an incompetent judge. And so your last foundation for the ideal is something whose worth is to be demonstrated solely by the fact that it exists.

Thus in this and in the last chapter, in general and in particular discussions, we have found the one problem recurring. The ideal is to have an ideal foundation, yet we seem always to give it a foundation in some reality. And if we then look about us, we always find some skeptic saying, either that he does not feel sure of the existence of any such reality, or that he doubts whether it means what we say that it means, or, again, that in any case there are other people, who have found other realities, and whose moral principles, founded on these other realities, are in deadly opposition to ours. The idealist of our preliminary discussion on the methods of ethical inquiry has so far met with numerous misfortunes. He has continually been enticed over to a sort of realistic position, and then just the same arguments that he used against the realist are used against him. If, however, true to himself, he assaults the realism of the modern descendants of Hobbes with the argument that all their physical hypotheses are worthless without ideals, then he hears the challenge to show an ideal that is not his whim, and that is not founded on a physical doctrine. There seems no refuge for him as yet but to turn skeptic himself.

CHAPTER V.

ETHICAL SKEPTICISM AND ETHICAL PESSIMISM.

Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law. DHAMMAPADA.

To turn skeptic himself, we said, seemed the only way open before our idealist. If only he had placed his standard a little lower! If only he had not insisted on getting his ideal by ideal methods! Then he might have remained safe in some one of the positions that he temporarily assumed. But always he drove himself out of them. Some stupendous external reality, some beautiful mental state, would suggest itself to him, and he would say: "Lo, here is the ideal that I seek." But forthwith his own doubt would arise, accusing him of faithlessness. "What hast thou found save that this or that happens to exist?" the doubt would say, and our idealist would be constrained to answer, "Not because it exists, but because I have freely chosen it for my guide, is it the Ideal." And then would come the repeated accusation that caprice is the sole ground for the choice of this ideal. Skepticism, then, total skepticism as to the foundation of ethics, seems to be the result that threatens us. We must face this skepticism and consider its outcome.

I.

It is in fact in such skepticism as this that one finds the real power and meaning of most genuine modern Pessimism. Not so much in the hopelessness of our efforts to reach our ideals once chosen as in our perpetual hesitation or unsteadiness in the choice of ideals, we most frequently find the deepest ground for pessimistic despair. Choose an ideal, and you have at least your part to play in the world. The game may seem worth the trouble; for far off as may be what you seek, there is the delight and the earnestness of free self-surrender to a great aim. But pessimism is almost inevitable if you have been long trying to find an ideal to which you can devote yourself, and if you have failed in your quest. Therefore those advocates of pessimism are most formidable who dwell less upon the ills of life, as bare facts, and more upon the aimlessness of life. Von Hartmann, therefore, to whom pessimism is more the supposed result of a process of summation, and thus is a belief that the sum of pains in life overbalances the sum of pleasures, produces little effect upon us by his balance-sheet. But Schopenhauer, who dwelt not only upon the balance-sheet, but still more upon the fundamental fact that life is restless and aimless, he is nearer to success in his pessimistic efforts. It is here that one finds also the true strength of Schopenhauer's model, the Buddhistic despair of life. Choose your aim in life, says in effect Buddhism, let it be wife or child, wealth or fame or power, and still your aim is only