a question posed in Schopenhauer's On the Foundations of Morality essay:
"How is it possible that suffering that is niether my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that it moves me to action?... This is something really mysterious, something for which Reason can provide no explanation, and for which no basis can be found in practical experience. It is not unkown even even to the most hard-hearted and self-interested. Examples appear every day before our eyes of instant responses of the kind, without reflection, one person helping another, coming to his aid, even setting his own life in clear danger for someone whom he has seen for the first time, having nothing more in mind than that the other is in need and in peril of his life..."
.matt. | 
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