Note 32 — CONTENTS

(p. 20). In order to exclude a misunderstanding and the doubts necessarily connected therewith, I add the following remark to what has been suggested shortly in the text. In order that an act of feeling may be called purely good in itself it is requisite: (1) that it be right; (2) that it be an act of pleasing and not an act of displeasing. If either condition be absent, it is already, in a certain respect, bad in itself; pleasure at the misfortunes of others (Schadenfreude) is bad on the first ground; pain at the sight of injustice, on the second ground. If both conditions are lacking, the act is still worse, in accordance with the principle of summation of which we shall speak later in the lecture. According to this same principle, where a feeling is good, its increase increases also the goodness of the act, while, similarly, where an act is purely bad, or at least participates in any respect in the bad, with the intensity of the feeling increases the badness of the act. When the act is a mixed one, good and bad manifestly increase, or diminish, in simple proportion to one another. The “plus” belonging to the one or the other side, must therefore, with the increase in intensity of the act become ever greater, with its decrease ever smaller. And so the surplus of good in the act may, under certain circumstances in spite of its impurity, be described as a very great good, while conversely, the surplus of the bad may, despite the admixture of the good, be described as something very bad (cf. note 36).