But in this
way a man gradually develops in himself real cruelty and malice. The
observation may also be added that as, according to Kant, matter
subsists only through the antagonism of the powers of expansion and
contraction, so human society subsists only by the antagonism of
hatred, or anger, and fear. For there is a moment in the life of
all of us when the malignity of our nature might perhaps make us
murderers, if it were not accompanied by a due admixture of fear to
keep it within bounds; and this fear, again, would make a man the
sport and laughing stock of every boy, if anger were not lying ready
in him, and keeping watch.
But it is _Schadenfreude_, a mischievous delight in the misfortunes of
others, which remains the worst trait in human nature. It is a feeling
which is closely akin to cruelty, and differs from it, to say the
truth, only as theory from practice. In general, it may be said of it
that it takes the place which pity ought to take--pity which is its
opposite, and the true source of all real justice and charity.
_Envy_ is also opposed to pity, but in another sense; envy, that is
to say, is produced by a cause directly antagonistic to that which
produces the delight in mischief. The opposition between pity and envy
on the one hand, and pity and the delight in mischief on the other,
rests, in the main, on the occasions which call them forth.
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