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If you reflect a moment, you must admit that a man who is truly sympathetic that is, who rejoices in his neighbor's happiness and grieves over his misfortunes can be neither ungenerous, nor deceitful, nor covetous, nor jealous, nor ferocious, nor avaricious, etc.; and one need not therefore be a pantheist to agree with Schopenhauer, that Mitleid, or sympathy, is the basis of all virtues.
He lost his spear, and received from it a wound which will never heal so long as it remains in the hands of the magician. In a vision he has been told to wait for the one who has been appointed to cure him. A voice from the Grail tells him the following mystery: "Durch Mitleid wissend, Der reine Thor, Harre sein' Den ich erkor."
And in the wonderful harmony between the music and the sacred words we hear the voice of the world's conscience. I once heard someone say to Mme. Cosima Wagner that certain passages in Parsifal, particularly the chorus "Durch Mitleid wissend," had a quality that was truly religious and the force of a revelation. But I find a greater force and a more truly Christian spirit in Les Béatitudes.
But finally, with the effect of a conclusion reached, a judgement, the hero whose heroism differs in quality from that of the others, the lowly of heart, whose dominant trait is Mitleid, compassion, sympathy with the woes of others, who pities swans and women and the sinful and the suffering, and gives his strength to helping them, and sanctifies himself for their sake.
He can sound the Mitleid motive without a suspicion of odious sentimentality. What charm there is in some of his tiny children as they lean their heads on their mothers! They fear the ocean, yet are fascinated by it. Near by is a mother and child in bed. They sleep. The right hand of the mother stretches, instinctively, toward the infant.
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