Courage and compassion, in so far as they contain an intrinsically
desirable state of mind, seem to involve essentially a cognition of
something evil or ugly. In the case of courage the object of the
cognition may be an evil of any of our three classes; in the case of
compassion, the proper object is pain. Both these virtues, accordingly,
must contain precisely the same cognitive element, which is also
essential to evils of class (1); and they are differentiated from these
by the fact that the emotion directed to these objects is, in their
case, an emotion of the same kind which was essential to evils of class
(2). In short, just as evils of class (2) seemed to consist in a hatred
of what was good or beautiful, and evils of class (1) in a love of what
was evil or ugly; so these virtues involve a _hatred_ of what is evil
or ugly. Both these virtues do, no doubt, also contain other elements,
and, among these, each contains its specific emotion; but that their
value does not depend solely upon these other elements, we may easily
assure ourselves, by considering what we should think of an attitude of
endurance or of defiant contempt toward an object intrinsically good
or beautiful, or of the state of a man whose mind was filled with pity
for the happiness of a worthy admiration. Yet pity for the undeserved
sufferings of others, endurance of pain to ourselves, and a defiant
hatred of evil dispositions in ourselves or in others, seem to be
undoubtedly admirable in themselves; and if so, there are admirable
things, which must be lost, if there were no cognition of evil.
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