Note 16 — Chapter VIII
Arthur Brodrick Bullock translation
In fact, how is it that we let ourselves be moved to pity, if not by getting out of our own consciousness, and becoming identified with the living sufferer; by leaving, so to say, our own being, and entering into his? We do not suffer, except as we suppose he suffers; it is not in us, it is in him, that we suffer ... offer a young man objects, on which the expansive force of his heart can act; objects such as may enlarge his nature, and incline it to go out to other beings, in whom he may everywhere find himself again. Keep carefully away those things which narrow his view, and make him self-centred, and which tighten the strings of the human ego. (Tendent le ressort (stretch the spring) du moi humain: i.e., stimulate the egoistic tendency.)—(Translator.)