Empathy

“ ANY tendency to Empathy is perpetually being checked by the need for practical thinking. We are made to think in the most summary fashion from one to another of those grouped possibilities, past, present and future, which we call a Thing; and in such discursive thinking we not only leave far behind the aspect, the shape, which has started a given scheme of Empathy, a given movement of lines, but we are often faced by facts which utterly contradict it. When, instead of looking at a particular aspect of that mountain, we set to climbing it ourselves, the mountain ceases to "rise" ”

“ This tendency to feel oneself into a situation is called empathy,—on the analogy of sympathy, which is feeling together with another; and empathic ideas are psychologically interesting, because they are the converse of perceptions: their core is imaginal, and their context is made up of sensations, the kinæsthetic and organic sensations that carry the empathic meaning. Like the feeling of strangeness, they are characteristic of imagination. ”

“ But although nowhere so fostered as in the contemplation of shapes, Empathy exists or tends to exist throughout our mental life. It is, indeed, one of our simpler, though far from absolutely elementary, psychological processes, entering into what is called imagination, sympathy, and also into that inference from our own inner experience which has shaped all our conceptions of an outer world, and given to the intermittent and heterogeneous sensations received from without the framework of our constant and highly unified inner experience, that is to say, of our own activities and aims. ”

“ The first of these two main misinterpretations is based upon the reflexive form of the German verb "sich einfühlen" (to feel oneself into) and it defines, or rather does not define, Empathy as a metaphysical and quasi-mythological projection of the ego into the object or shape under observation; a notion incompatible with the fact that Empathy, being only another of those various mergings of the activities of the perceiving subject with the qualities of the perceived object wherewith we have already dealt, depends upon a comparative or momentary abeyance of all thought of an ego ”

“ Now it is this complete awareness, this brimfull interest in our own dynamic changes, in our various and variously combined facts of movement inasmuch as energy and intention, it is this sense of the values of movement which Empathy, by its schematic simplicity and its reiteration, is able to reinstate. ”

“ It is this reiterative nature which, joined to its schematic definiteness, gives Empathy its extraordinary power over us. Empathy, as I have tried to make clear to the Reader, is due not only to the movements which we are actually making in the course of shape-perception, to present movements with their various modes of speed, intensity and facility and their accompanying intentions ”

“ Empathy can be traced in all of modes of speech and thought, particularly in the universal attribution of doing and having and tending where all we can really assert is successive and varied being. Science has indeed explained away the anthropomorphic implications of Force and Energy, Attraction and Repulsion; and philosophy has reduced Cause and Effect from implying intention and effort to meaning mere constant succession. But Empathy still helps us to many valuable analogies ”

“ No; we cannot explain the mountain rising by the mountain looking, for the only looking in the business is our looking at the mountain. And if the Reader objects again that these are all figures of speech, I shall answer that Empathy is what explains why we employ figures of speech at all, and occasionally employ them, as in the case of this rising mountain, when we know perfectly well that the figure we have chosen expresses the exact reverse of the objective truth. ”

“ Orgueil smiled, and said, "I look upon compassion, sir, to be a very great weakness; I have no superstition to fright me into my duty, but I do what I think just by all the world; for the real love of rectitude is the motive of all ray actions. If I could be moved by compassion in my temper to relieve another, the merit of it would be entirely lost, because it would be done chiefly to please myself; but when I do for any one, what they have a right to demand from me, by the laws of society and right reason, then it becomes real virtue, and sound wisdom." ”

“ Surely it is this soundness of nature, this broad and genial quality, this full-blooded, full-orbed sanity of spirit, which gives the men we love that wide-eyed sympathy which gives hope and power to humanity, which gives range to every good quality and is so excellent a credential of genuine manhood. Let your life and your thought be narrow, and your sympathy will shrink to a like scale. It is a quality which follows the seeing mind afield, which waits on experience. ”

“ How, I would simply ask, can he feel for others who has no sense of sympathy with his own suffering nature? If the well of human kindness be dried up within him, how can he give to the parched throats the refreshing waters of compassion? ”

“ And, when you ask how much sympathy you ought to bestow, although the amount is, truly enough, a matter of ideal on your own part, yet in this notion of the combination of ideals with active virtues you have a rough standard for shaping your decision. In any case, your imagination is extended. You divine in the world about you matter for a little more humility on your own part, and tolerance, reverence, and love for others; and you gain a certain inner joyfulness at the increased importance of our common life. ”

“ Humanity is thus taught him by sympathy: where is this sympathy placed?—in the nerves: the nerves are the communicants with outward nature; the more delicate the nerves, the finer the sympathies; hence, women and children are more alive to sympathy than men. Well, mark me: do not these nerves have attraction and sympathy—-not only with human suffering, but with the powers of what is falsely termed inanimate nature? ”

“ Then, when I reflect that, not satisfied with sympathising with sufferings of which you can form no idea from actual experience, you aid me with the most salutary counsels, and guide me, step by step, in the new and delightful path of virtue and goodness pointed out by you to relieve a weary and worn-out heart, oh, my lord, what treasure of all that is good must your mind contain! From what source have you drawn so large a supply of tender pity for the woes of all? ”

“ Sir, I know it as though it were written in a book: your life has been one long calculation—your sympathy or kindness a calculated thing. Good-nature, emotion you may have had, but never the divine thing by which the world is saved. ”

“ We must look through the depths of their experience into their own souls, and through the depths of that experience again upon the world, beholding it as it appears to the beggar, and the lonely woman, and the child of vice and crime, and the hero, and the saint, and as it falls with intense yet diverse refractions upon all these multiform angles of personality. So shall we learn to cherish a solemn and tender interest in the dear humanity around us, and feel the arteries of sympathy which connect it, in all its conditions, with our own hearts. ”

“ Understand me:—the sympathy which prompts us to mitigate the sorrows of others, and to share and exalt their joys; the attachment which binds us to friends and relatives; the love that entwines us with our families;—all these, being frequently attended with considerable sacrifices of our own personal convenience and enjoyment, are the first secret and silent movements of Reason as Instinct, gently breaking down the harshest and coarsest forms of Egoism, and so laying the foundation for the development of a wider and more comprehensive love. ”

“ Then you should have a human heart. But have you, indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as compassion there? Do you never feel another's pain? Have you no sympathy? no sense of human woe? ”

“ They have not grasped the whole truth who see in the sympathetic side of human nature, in the tender and amiable impulses of the heart, the well-spring of our moral judgments. These gentle qualities—pity, tenderness, sympathy—are the sweet, younger sisters of Virtue; but Virtue herself is greater than they. ”

“ When one of them is good, it gives evidence at an early age of the sentiments of sympathy or altruism, such as pity and affection, as well as an instinctive sentiment of duty, the object of which is not yet social. ”

“ Is the nature sweet and trustful; is it free from the morbid self-love which calls itself “sensitive feeling” and frets at imaginary offences; is the tendency to be grateful for kindness, yet take kindness meekly, and accept as a benefit what the vain call a due? From dispositions thus blessed, sweet temper will come forth to gladden thee, spontaneous and free. Quick with some, with some slow, word and look emerge out of the heart. ”

“ I am smitten with silence when trouble and difficulty assail me, and I have an intolerable instinct against asking for the sympathy and commiseration of others; whereas those better accustomed than myself,—as I have shown you,—how readily are they able to requisition your sympathy, to appropriate wholly your pity, and to confiscate your possessions, your theories, and your ethics! ”

“ Diffidence and hope would reciprocally balance and excite each other. A continuity would be given to your being, and its progressiveness ensured. All your knowledge otherwise obtained, whether from books or conversation or experience, would find centres round which it would organise itself. And, lastly, the habit of confuting your past self, and detecting the causes and occasions of your having mistaken or overlooked the truth, will give you both a quickness and a winning kindness, resulting from sympathy, in exposing the errors of others, as if you were an alter ego, of his mistake. ”

“ Their persons, features, look, gait, gesture, familiar to our thoughts, vividly engraven. They address themselves to every one of us personally, in tones that thrill and chill, or that convulse us with merriment—and all for pleasure! They ask our sympathy, but they task it not. ”

“ Our feelings are not given us for our ornament, but to spur us on to right action. Compassion, for instance, is not impressed upon the human heart, only to adorn the fair face with tears, and to give an agreeable languor to the eyes. ”

“ Looking from above, sympathy appears as compassion, the impulse to help another by denying one's self. Looking from below, it appears as envy, the impulse to relieve one's distress by sharing in the good fortune of another. In either case, extreme unlikeness of condition inspires feelings which tend to lessen or remove that unlikeness. But the differentiating group is riddled with inequality, so that, did it trust itself to spontaneous feelings, apart from law and morality, it would be ground to powder between compassion and envy as between the upper and the nether millstone. ”

“ And just as fear may have two objectives, so also too compassion. The first is just the ordinary sensibility—in other words, a sympathy with the misfortunes and sufferings of another, and one which is experienced as something finite and negative. Your countrified cousin is ready enough with compassion of this order. The man of nobility and greatness, however, has no wish to be smothered with this sort of pity. ”

“ All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. ”

“ O one quality of the mind and heart is more important as an element conducive to worldly success than civility—that feeling of kindness and love for our fellow-beings which is expressed in pleasing manners. Yet how many of our young men, with an affected contempt for the forms and conventionalities of life, assume to despise those delicate attentions, that exquisite tenderness of thought and manner, that mark the true gentleman. ”

“ ALLIED by birth, and in mind, and similar in age—and in thought still more intimately connected, the sympathy which bound our souls together, at first sight, is less extraordinary. Shall we any longer wonder at its irresistible impulse?—Shall we strive to oppose the link of nature that draws us to each other? ”

“ This argument, I confess, invariably delights and humiliates me: it is so full of sympathy for all sorts and conditions of men, and so appreciative of what is and what is not. It is so very human and humane. ”

“ Their conception of what is right, of what is humane and honorable for them to accept, has been stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a generosity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which must challenge the admiration of every friend of mankind ”

“ And what is compassion but a fellow-feeling for another’s misery, which prompts us to help him if we can? And this emotion is obedient to reason, when compassion is shown without violating right, as when the poor are relieved, or the penitent forgiven. ”

“ But beside these original causes of pride and humility, there is a secondary one in the opinions of others, which has an equal influence on the affections. Our reputation, our character, our name are considerations of vast weight and importance; and even the other causes of pride; virtue, beauty and riches; have little influence, when not seconded by the opinions and sentiments of others. In order to account for this phænomenon it will be necessary to take some compass, and first explain the nature of sympathy. ”

“ We have our share of sympathy; hearty, healthy, human sympathy for all that is strong and successful; but the force of moral indignation—either our own or our neighbors'—has well-nigh cowed us into silence. The fashion of the day provides a procrustean standard for every form of distinction ”