(Suggested by Rousseau’s “Discourse on Inequality”)

I BELIEVE I need fear no contradiction in granting to man that unique natural virtue which the most outré detractors of human nature have been forced to accord him. I speak of compassion, a state of mind suitable to beings weak and subject as we are to so many misfortunes,—a virtue so universal and so useful to man, that it precedes in him the use of all reflection,—and so natural, that even animals sometimes give perceptible signs of it. Without mentioning the tenderness of mothers for their young, and the perils they face to protect them, we notice every day the repugnance horses have to trample under foot a living body. An animal does not pass without uneasiness a dead animal of its own species; there are some even who give them a kind of burial; and the mournful bellowing of cattle in entering the slaughterhouse shows the impression that is made on them. One sees with pleasure that the author of “The Fable of the Bees” (Mandeville) is obliged to acknowledge man as a sensitive and compassionate being, and that he departs in the illustrations he gives in this connection from his cold and subtle style, offering us the pathetic image of a man under lock and key who sees in the open a ferocious beast tearing a child from its mother’s bosom, crushing with its murderous teeth its feeble members, and tearing with its nails the child’s palpitating vitals. What dreadful agitation does not the witness of such an event feel, although it is something in which he has no selfish interest;—what anguish does he not suffer at such a sight, feeling himself unable to carry assistance to the mother lying in a faint, or to the expiring child!

  Such is the pure movement of nature anterior to any reflection, such is the force of a natural compassion, which the most depraved morals have a hard task to destroy, that we can see every day in our plays men become moved and shed tears who, were they in the place of the tyrant they condemn, would still aggravate the tortures of their enemies;—like the sanguinary Sylla, who was so sensitive to misfortunes he himself had not caused, or like the tyrant who could not be present at the representation of any tragedy, for fear that he might be seen moaning and weeping with Andromache and Priam, though he heard without emotion the shrieks of so many citizens who were murdered daily by his orders.

  Mandeville very properly felt that with all their morals men would have been nothing but monsters, if nature had not given them compassion to strengthen their reason; but he failed to see that from that sole quality are derived all the social virtues which he denies them. In reality, what is generosity, clemency, humanity, if not compassion applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to the human species in general? Kindness and friendship themselves, are, after all, the production of a constant compassion, aimed at a particular object; for to wish that some one should not suffer, what else is it than to wish that he should be happy? Were it true that commiseration were a mere sentiment that puts us in the place of him that suffers (a sentiment obscure but alive in the savage man, developed though weak in civilized man), what difference would this idea make to the truth I am speaking of, if not to give it more force? In point of fact, compassion will be so much more energetic as the animal spectator is able to identify itself more intimately with the suffering animal. Now, it is evident that this identification must have been infinitely narrower in the state of reason. It is reason which begets self-love, and reflection strengthens it; it is through reason that man enters into himself; it is reason which separates him from every thing that cramps or afflicts him. It is philosophy which isolates him; it is through philosophy that at the sight of a sufferer, he says secretly: “Perish if you wish; I am in safety.” There is nothing more than the dangers to society at large to trouble the tranquil slumbers of the philosopher and tear him from his bed. His neighbor may be murdered under his window; he has but to close his ears with his hands, and argue somewhat with himself, to prevent the nature which revolts in him from identifying him with the one who is being assassinated. The savage man has none of this admirable talent; and, for want of wisdom and reason, we see him rashly giving himself up to the first sentiment of humanity. In mobs, in street fights, the populace congregate, the prudent man keeps at a distance; it is the street mob, la canaille, it is the women of the slums who separate the fighters, and prevent respectable people from cutting each other’s throat.

  It is therefore quite certain that compassion is a natural sentiment, which, moderating in each individual the activity of self-love, co-operates for the mutual preservation of the entire species. It is through compassion that we are carried without reflection to the assistance of those we see suffer; it is again compassion which, in a state of nature, stands instead of laws, of morals, and of virtue, with this advantage that none are tempted to disobey her sweet voice. It is compassion which will turn the robust savage from taking from a feeble child or from an infirm old man their substance painfully acquired, if he himself expects to be able to find his own elsewhere. It is compassion which, in place of that sublime maxim of reasoned justice: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” suggests to all men that other maxim of natural goodness, much less perfect, but more useful than the former: “Do thy good with the least possible evil to others.”

  It is, in one word, in natural sentiments more than in subtle arguments that we have to look for the cause of that repugnance which every man would feel in doing wrong even independently of all the maxims of education. Although it may belong to Socrates and to souls of his temper to acquire virtue by reason, the human species would have ceased to exist long ago if its preservation had depended on the reason of the individuals of whom the race is composed.