But among the hindrances to ethical practice the two most conspicuous must not be omitted. They are _pity_ and _terror_, pity for the pain suffered by others, fear of pain for oneself. Aristotle regarded it as the high function of the tragic drama to liberate men from these disturbing factors. The two are combined and in consequence exacerbated to an extreme degree in those situations where the pain suffered by another person is at the same time poignantly felt as one’s own pain. And the anguish felt in seeing the physical suffering of another is even exceeded in witnessing the moral degradation of another, as of an erring son or an apparently irreclaimable husband or wife. The doctrine of frustration as explained in this volume is intended to show the way of relief in such situations. But it is only by not shirking the pain, by permitting it fully to penetrate, by uncovering the breast entirely to the entrance of the pointed spear that we shall have the experience of the transformation of it into the shaft of light. APPENDIX II[103] THE EXERCISE OF FORCE IN THE INTEREST OF FREEDOM Force is a moral adiaphoron. The stigma attaching to the use of force belongs rather to its abuse. The employment of force is good or bad according as the ends for which it is used are good or bad. The precept of non-resistance in the Sermon on the Mount is to be understood as a piece of ethical irony. The right, or to be more explicit, the duty, of society to coerce individual members of it rests on the same ground and holds within the same limits as the duty of the individual to coerce himself. Self-coercion depends on the difference in the quality of one’s impulses, on the choice one is bound to make between competitive ends. Self-coercion is of two kinds: stimulative and repressive; stimulative to overcome inertia, repressive to subject wrong to right impulses. He who denies the duty of self-coercion, to be consistent, must fall back on the position of the Cynics. For the Cynics were indeed consistent. They asserted not only the right of the individual to be free from outside compulsion, but also the right of each individual moment of the individual’s life to be lived without regard or subjection to future moments. Hence they rejected civilization and its tasks, inasmuch as the prosecution of any task involves the subordination of the present to the content of some future moment. But if the coercion of a man by himself be admitted, it follows that the exercise of force upon a man by society must in principle be likewise admitted. For we are social by nature; we take an interest in the achievement by each one of his ends, and we regard such achievement as a social-benefit.