misery, which is inflicted on us by such a sight and which may he of a very different kind commiseration, for it is certainly a misery from which the suffering one before us is free: it is our own, as his suffering is his own. But it is only this personal feeling of misery which in shake off through deeds of commiseration. Yet we never do anything of the kind from one single motive; as surely as we wish thereby to free ourselves from suffering, so surely do we, by the same action, yield to an impulse of pleasure—pleasure arising at the sight of a contrast to our condition; at the consciousness of being able to help if only we would do so; at the thought of praise and gratitude in case we should help ; at the very act of help, in so far as it may prove successful, and as something gradually successful gives pleasure to the performer; but, above all, in the sensation that our action sets limits to a shocking injustice (the very outburst of one's indignation is refreshing). All these, and a few other things of far greater subtlety, constitute “commiseration." How clumsily does language with its one word come down upon such a polyphonous being! That commiseration, on the other hand, is of one kind with the suffering at the sight of which it springs up, or that it has a specially acute, penetrating perception for it, is contradictory to experience, and he who has glorified it in these two connections was lacking sufficient experience in this very sphere. This is my way of doubting all those incredible things which Schopenhauer
