The preponderance of either mode of viewing life not only determines single acts; it shapes a man's whole nature and temperament. Hence the radical difference of mental habit between the =good= character and the =bad=. The latter feels everywhere that a thick wall of partition hedges him off from all others. For him the world is an =absolute non-ego=, and his relation to it an essentially hostile one; consequently, the key-note of his disposition is hatred, suspicion, envy, and pleasure in seeing distress. The good character, on the other hand, lives in an external world homogeneous with his own being; the rest of mankind is not in his eyes a non-ego; he thinks of it rather as "myself once more." He therefore stands on an essentially amicable footing with every one: he is conscious of being, in his inmost nature, akin to the whole human race,[9] takes direct interest in their weal and woe, and confidently assumes in their case the same interest in him. This is the source of his deep inward peace, and of that happy, calm, contented manner, which goes out on those around him, and is as the "presence of a good diffused." Whereas the bad character in time of trouble has no trust in the help of his fellow-creatures. If he invokes aid, he does so without confidence: obtained, he feels no real gratitude for it; because he can hardly discern therein anything but the effect of others' folly. For he is simply incapable of recognising his own self in some one else; and this, even after it has furnished the most incontestible signs of existence in that other person: on which fact the repulsive nature of all unthankfulness in reality depends. The moral isolation, which thus naturally and inevitably encompasses the bad man, is often the cause of his becoming the victim of despair. The good man, on the contrary, will appeal to his neighbours for assistance, with an assurance equal to the consciousness he has of being ready himself to help them. As I have said: to the one type, humanity is a =non-ego=; to the other, "myself once more." The magnanimous character, who forgives his enemy, and returns good for evil, rises to the sublime, and receives the highest meed of praise; because he recognises his real self even there where it is most conspicuously disowned. Every purely beneficent act all help entirely and genuinely unselfish, being, as such, exclusively inspired by another's distress, is, in fact, if we probe the matter to the bottom, a dark enigma, a piece of mysticism put into practice; inasmuch as it springs out of, and finds its only true explanation in, the same higher knowledge that constitutes the essence of whatever is mystical.