more) elementary ingredients in personal gratification which enter
largely into our self satisfaction: one of them being the pleasure of
the emotion, of which species is sympathy with tragedy, and another,
when the impulse is to action, being the pleasure of exercising one's
power. Should a sufferer be very dear to us, we divest ourselves of pain
by the performance of acts of sympathy.--With the exception of some few
philosophers, men have placed sympathy very low in the rank of moral
feelings: and rightly.
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=Self Defence.=--If self defence is in general held a valid
justification, then nearly every manifestation of so called immoral
egoism must be justified, too. Pain is inflicted, robbery or killing
done in order to maintain life or to protect oneself and ward off harm.
A man lies when cunning and delusion are valid means of self
preservation. To injure intentionally when our safety and our existence
are involved, or the continuance of our well being, is conceded to be
moral. The state itself injures from this motive when it hangs
criminals. In unintentional injury the immoral, of course, can not be
present, as accident alone is involved. But is there any sort of
intentional injury in which our existence and the maintenance of our
well being be not involved? Is there such a thing as injuring from
absolute badness, for example, in the case of cruelty? If a man does not
know what pain an act occasions, that act is not one of wickedness. Thus
the child is not bad to the animal, not evil. It disturbs and rends it
as if it were one of its playthings. Does a man ever fully know how much
pain an act may cause another? As far as our nervous system extends, we
shield ourselves from pain. If it extended further, that is, to our
fellow men, we would never cause anyone else any pain (except in such
cases as we cause it to ourselves, when we cut ourselves, surgically, to
heal our ills, or strive and trouble ourselves to gain health). We
conclude from analogy that something pains somebody and can in
consequence, through recollection and the power of imagination, feel
pain also. But what a difference there always is between the tooth ache
and the pain (sympathy) that the spectacle of tooth ache occasions!
Therefore when injury is inflicted from so called badness the degree of
pain thereby experienced is always unknown to us: in so far, however, as
pleasure is felt in the act (a sense of one's own power, of one's own
excitation) the act is committed to maintain the well being of the
individual and hence comes under the purview of self defence and lying
for self preservation. Without pleasure, there is no life; the struggle
for pleasure is the struggle for life. Whether the individual shall
carry on this struggle in such a way that he be called good or in such a
way that he be called bad is something that the standard and the
capacity of his own intellect must determine for him.
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