Note 29 — Chapter IV · SYMPATHY OR COMMUNION AS AN ASPECT OF SOCIETY

Sympathy in the sense of compassion is a specific emotion or sentiment, and has nothing necessarily in common with sympathy in the sense of communion. It might be thought, perhaps, that compassion was one form of the sharing of feeling; but this appears not to be the case. The sharing of painful feeling may precede and cause compassion, but is not the same with it. When I feel sorry for a man in disgrace, it is, no doubt, in most cases, because I have imaginatively partaken of his humiliation; but my compassion for him is not the thing that is shared, but is something additional, a comment on the shared feeling. I may imagine how a suffering man feels—sympathize with him in that sense—and be moved not to pity but to disgust, contempt, or perhaps admiration. Our feeling makes all sorts of comments on the imagined feeling of others. Moreover it is not essential that there should be any real understanding in order that compassion may be felt. One may compassionate a worm squirming on a hook, or a fish, or even a tree. As between persons pity, while often a helpful and healing emotion, leading to kindly acts, is sometimes indicative of the absence of true sympathy. We all wish to be understood, at least in what we regard as our better aspects, but few of us wish to be pitied except in moments of weakness and discouragement. To accept pity is to confess that one falls below the healthy standard of vigor and self-help. While a real understanding of our deeper thought is rare and precious, pity is usually cheap, many people finding an easy pleasure in indulging it, as one may in the indulgence of grief, resentment, or almost any emotion. It is often felt by the person who is its object as a sort of an insult, a back-handed thrust at self-respect, the unkindest cut of all. For instance, as between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, and is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.