Genuine virtue springs from the knowledge, which we have through intuition, that other individuals are {83} of the same nature as ourselves. The source of morality is this inward principle of solidarity between individual and individual. This sense of brotherhood, which pervades the whole of humanity, is the real and vital fact which makes the whole world kin. Transcending the spirit of egoism, which is fostered by the actual conditions of life, there springs the spirit of altruism, which strives to subordinate the good of the individual to the good of the whole community, and prompts the individual to self-denial and unselfishness. In dealing with men, we should never, he says, take into consideration their interested motives, their limited intellectual capacity, nor their wrong-headedness, but we should think only of their sufferings, their needs, their anxieties and their misery. Only in this way can we feel ourselves akin, and so enter into sympathy with others, that we experience a fellow-feeling and a desire to help them in their need. The two fundamental attitudes of mind, in which the virtues and vices of men are rooted, are envy and sympathy. Each man bears within himself these two diametrically opposite characteristics. One or the other quality becomes the fundamental attitude of mind and the basis of action according to the character of the individual. Envy builds up a strong, impregnable wall between each man and his neighbour, isolating the individual in his crust of misanthropy, which grows daily harder and denser. Sympathy, on the other hand, breaks down the barriers between man and man. The sense of division grows thin and transparent, until the individual feels himself a part of an organic whole, deriving his sole usefulness and justification only in so far as he subordinates his own personal ends to the common good. Schopenhauer's use of the factor of sympathy in {84} explaining morality, differs considerably from that of the English philosophers of the eighteenth century, in whose systems of ethics sympathy played a large part. The sympathy, which Hume presupposes as "a principle in human nature, beyond which we cannot hope to find any principle more general," is sympathy with the pleasure resulting from the effects of virtuous action. Adam Smith, who also regarded sympathy as the ultimate element into which moral sentiments may be analysed, approached more nearly to the position of Schopenhauer. Morality arises in its simplest form from direct sympathy or "fellow-feeling" with the passions of others, which a spectator feels from imagining himself in their situation. It is of two kinds, and moves the spectator to enter into the sentiments of the person concerned, and also moves the person concerned "to bring down his emotions to what the spectator can go along with." It is a power which enables us to take a disinterested view of our own conduct by putting ourselves in another's position.