can appreciate his position and know the measure of his
solitude. In the case of all individuals the discernible is only a small
part of what exists. In man the measure of this presentation is, even to
himself, very small, and that which he can readily make evident to his
neighbor is an exceedingly limited part of the real whole. Yet it is on
this slender basis that we must rest our relations with the fellow man
if we are to found them upon knowledge. The imperfection of this method
of ascertaining the fellow-man is well shown by the trifling contents of
the category discriminations we apply to him. While, as has been
suggested, much can be done by those who have gained in knowledge of our
kind by importing understandings into our relations with men, the only
effective way to the betterment of those relations is through the
sympathies.

What can be done by knowledge in helping us to a comprehension of the
fellow-man is at best merely explanatory of his place in the phenomenal
world; of itself it has only scientific value. The advantage of the
sympathetic way of approach is that in this method the neighbor is
accounted for on the supposition that he is ourself in another form, so
we feel for and with him on the instinctive hypothesis that he is
essentially ourself. There can be no question that this method of
looking upon other individualities is likely to lead to many errors. We
see examples of these blunders in all the many grades of the
personifying process, from the savage's worship of a tree or stone to
the civilized man's conception of a human-like god. We see them also in
the attribution to the lower animals of thoughts and feelings which are
necessarily limited to our own kind, but in the case of man the
conception of identity gives a minimum of error and a maximum of truth.
It, indeed, gives a truer result than could possibly be attained by any
scientific inquiries that we could make, or could conceive of being
effectively made, and this for the following reasons.

When, as in the sympathetic state, we feel that the neighbor of our
species is essentially ourself, the tacit assumption is that his needs
and feelings are as like our own as our own states of mind at diverse
times are like one another, so that we might exchange motives with him
without experiencing any great sense of strangeness. What we have in
mind is not the measure of instruction or education, not the class or
station or other adventitious circ