GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

OBJECTIVE iNTUITIONISM 185
hundred be a pleasant one, and most egoists have, in
fact, been hedonists. An example of the way in which
an egoistical view can be applied to an apparently dis-
interested sentiment is Hobbes's account of pity* Pity,
he defines, as "fear felt for oneself at the Bight of another's
distress". The distress of another person, in other words,
only moves us in so far as it causes us to picture ourselves
in a similar situation. It is, in fact, not the other person
that we pity at all, but an imagined condition of ourselves.
Butler's Criticism of the Egoistic Account of Pity and
Sympathy. Butler's criticism is instructive and may
be taken as a model reproof for those who, in the interests
of a delusive simplicity, seek to reduce to a single motivat-
ing factor pure and simple the complex elements that
compose even the most single-minded of human sentiments,
or inspire even the most straightforward of human
actions. "The truth," as Algernon says in The Important*
of Bring Earrust," is rarely pure and never simple." Butler
out the difficulties in Hobbes's account.
begins by pointing
If, he says, it were true, then the most sympathetic people
would also be the most nervous since, on Hobbes's showing,
they would be the people who were most apprehensively
concerned for their own safety. This, however, is demon*
strably not the case. Moreover, while we admire those
who are sympathetic, we are apt to despise those who
are over-anxious about their own safety, the inference
being that since sympathy and nervousness promote
different reactions in other people, they must be recogniz-
ably different states of consciousness in the person feeling
them. A third objection is founded on the admitted fact
that we are apt to feel more sympathy for the misfortunes
of our friends than for those of strangers. If Hobbes is
right, we must conclude that the distress of a friend makes
us more anxious about ourselves than the distress of a
stranger. This, Butler contends, is not the case; and
although this contention of his might plausibly be questioned,
it must, I think, be conceded that, although