Impatience of the Heart

by Stefan Zweig

pity is a two-edged affair if ever there was one. If you don’t know how to handle it you’ll do best to keep your hands – and your heart – well away from it. It’s only at the beginning – just like morphine – that it really helps a sick person and does do some good, but then if you don’t know how to get the dose right, and when to stop, it turns into a lethal poison, a murder weapon. You achieve something with the first few injections; they calm the patient, suppress the pain. The fatal problem is that the human organism, both the mental and the physical, has an uncanny ability to adapt; just as the nerves want more and more morphine, the mental state needs more and more pity, and eventually needs more than can be given. In both cases the moment inevitably comes when you have to say no, no matter whether the sick person hates you more, because of this final refusal, than if you had never helped him in the first place. Yes, my dear Herr Leutnant, you have to keep your pity well under control, otherwise it will do worse damage than all the indifference in the world. This is something we doctors know, and so does any judge or court-bailiff or pawnbroker, and if all of these people yielded and allowed their pity free rein, this world of ours would come to a standstill. It’s a dangerous thing, pity, a dangerous thing!