It now becomes apparent, why in the foregoing part I have called Compassion the great mystery of Ethics.

He, who goes to meet death for his fatherland, has freed himself from the illusion which limits a man's existence to his own person. Such a one has broken the fetters of the principium individuationis.

In his widened, enlightened nature he embraces all his countrymen, and in them lives on and on. Nay, he reaches forward to, and merges himself in the generations yet unborn, for whom he works; and he regards death as a wink of the eyelids, so momentary that it does not interrupt the sight.

We may here sum up the characteristics of the two human types above indicated. To the Egoist all other people are uniformly and intrinsically strangers.