13. Morality in the Light of Spiritual Research

Schopenhauer was by no means a spiritual scientist in the sense in which spiritual science is meant here. Therefore, for him too, the soul, when it descends into its depths, does not separate in such a way that it develops a trinity of powers corresponding to the three stages of knowledge — imagination, inspiration, intuition — but rather everything merges for him. The “soul” is a nebulousness of all the powers living in its depths. Thus Schopenhauer cannot dissect the moral virtues, either, the development of which must be the preparation for a spiritual education: a sense of fact as the basis of the virtue of truthfulness for the imagination, fortitude as the basis for what leads to inspiration, and the third - which Schopenhauer thoroughly discusses - that slumbers in the depths of the soul and that one can call general interest in the environment and surroundings. But Schopenhauer draws attention to something else, and here he is, in a sense, deeply ingenious. He draws attention to what is in fact one of the few soul qualities and soul impulses that already show in the physical world how an underground connection, as it were, exists directly between soul and soul. Schopenhauer draws attention to compassion, one could better say to sympathy. One need only mention the word compassion, compassion, of which Schopenhauer says that it must be present in every soul that can be called moral, and one will feel, firstly, that compassion touches something that is in fact connected to the innermost moral impulse, to that which can really establish morality. On the other hand, one will feel that with the word compassion one has touched something that is an intuition already present in the physical world, a putting oneself into the other soul. For anyone who can look at the world sensibly, proof that there is a physical connection between soul and soul, proof that the spirit with its powers exists between soul and soul, is what can be designated by the word compassion.