ABSTRACT
Compassion, for example, has not been given the same weight in all cultures, and there may be some cultures in which the Schopenhauerian suggestion that compassion is the basis of morality would seem ludicrous. Moreover, some have talked of the education of the emotions in a way that suggests that in the case of at least some emotions these have to be inculcated rather than expected to appear naturally. All that, however, depends heavily on the weight contributed by the term ‘education’. It is indeed one thing to say that children have to come to feel sympathy, etc.; it is quite another to say that they have to learn to have such feelings. Thus there is a sense in which the people all have to learn to love and thus have any chance of stable emotional attitudes.
