. It is well known that
gregarious animals nearly always shun and desert a wounded member of the
herd. Among men, how many there are who, when they see suffering, hasten
to withdraw themselves from the spectacle, in order to escape the pain
which it sympathetically awakens in them. This impulse may go to the
length of aversion, as typified by Dives in the Gospel. It is therefore
a complete psychological error to consider sympathy as capable, unaided,
of delivering men from egoism; it only takes the first step, and not
always that.

c) _The third phase._--Under its intellectual form, sympathy is an
agreement in feelings and actions, founded on unity of representation.
The law of development is summed up in Spencer's formula, "The degree
and range of sympathy depend on the clearness and extent of
representation." I should, however, add: on condition of being based on
an emotional temperament. This last is the source _par excellence_ of
sympathy, because it vibrates like an echo; the active temperament lends
itself less to such impulses, because it has so much to do in
manifesting its own individuality that it can scarcely manifest those of
others; finally, the phlegmatic temperament does so least of all,
because it presents a minimum of emotional life; like Leibnitz' monads,
it has no windows.

In passing from the emotional to the intellectual phase, sympathy gains
in extent and stability. In fact, emotional sympathy requires some
analogy in temperament or nature; it can scarcely be established between
the timid and the daring, between the cheerful and the melancholic; it
may be extended to all human beings and to the animals nearest us, but
not beyond them. On the contrary, it is the special attribute of
intelligence to seek resemblances or analogies everywhere, to unify; it
embraces the whole of nature. By the law of transfer (which we have
already studied) sympathy follows this invading march and comprehends
even inanimate objects, as in the case of the poet, who feels himself in
communion with the sea, the woods, the lakes, or the mountains. Besides,
intellectual sympathy participates in the relative fixity of
representation; we find a simple instance of this in animal societies,
such as those of the bees, where unity or sympathy among the members is
only maintained by the perception or representation of the queen.

4. Rational Sympathy[149]

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form