pity, of its very nature entirely indifferent to all calculations of utility or the reverse. But that we have not the courage to set our only motive, this of Pity, in the forefront of our appeals and admonitions to the Folk, is the curse of our Civilisation, the attestation of the un-God-ing of our established Church religions.
{FEUER} {anti-FEUER/NIET} {SCHOP} In our days it required the instruction of a philosopher who fought with dogged ruthlessness against all cant and all pretence, to prove the pity deep-seated in the human breast, the only true foundation of morality. It was mocked at, nay, indignantly repudiated by the senate of a learned Academy; for virtue, where not enjoined by Revelation, was only to be based on Logic (Vernunft-Erwagung). Viewed logically, on the other hand, this Pity was pronounced a sublimated egoism: that the sight of others’ sufferings caused pain to ourselves, was said to be compassion’s ground-of-action, and not that foreign suffering itself, which we merely sought to do away with so as to obliterate the painful effect on our own selves. [P. 198] How ingenious we had become, in the slime of basest selfishness to guard ourselves against disturbance by the pangs of fellow-feeling!” [982W-{10/79}Letter to E. von Weber ‘Against Vivisection’: PW Vol. VI, p. 196-198]
[983W-{10/79}Letter to E. von Weber ‘Against Vivisection’: PW Vol. VI, p. 201]
[P. 201] {anti-FEUER/NIET} “Unfortunately our review of human things has shown us Pity struck from off the laws of our Society, since even our medical institutes, pretending care for man, have become establishments for teaching ruthlessness, which naturally will be extended – for sake of ‘science’ – from animals to any human beings found defenceless against its experiments.” [983W-{10/79}Letter to E. von Weber ‘Against Vivisection’: PW Vol. VI, p. 201]
[984W-{10/79} Letter to E. von Weber ‘Against Vivisection’: PW Vol. VI, p. 201]
[P. 201] {FEUER} {anti-FEUER/NIET} {SCHOP} “When first it dawned on humanwisdom that the same thing breathed in animals as in mankind, it appeared too late to avert the curse which, ranging ourselves with the beasts of prey, we seemed to have called down upon us through the taste of animal food: disease and misery of every kind, to which we did not see mere vegetable eating men exposed. The insight thus obtained led further to the consciousness of a deep-seated guilt in our earthly [P. 202] being: it moved those fully seized therewith to turn aside from all that stirs the passions, through free-willed poverty and total abstinence from animal food. To these wise men the mystery of the world unveiled itself as a restless tearing into pieces, to be restored to restful unity by nothing save compassion. His pity for each breathing creature, determining his every action, redeemed the sage from all the ceaseless change of suffering existences, which he himself must pass until his last emancipation.” [984W-{10/79}Letter to E. von Weber ‘Against Vivisection’: PW Vol. VI, p. 201]
[985W-{10/79}Letter to E. von Weber ‘Against Vivisection’: PW Vol. VI, p. 202-203]
[P. 202] “ … it seems that the march of civilisation, by [P .203] making him[man] indifferent to ‘the God,’ turned man himself into a raging beast of prey … . (…) The monstrous guilt of all this life a divine and sinless being took upon himself, and expiated with his agony and death. Through this atonement all that breathes
