To Aristotle tragedy seemed to afford a cleansing or
"katharsis of the soul" through the sympathetic experience
of pity or fear. To Schopenhauer music was the greatest of
the arts because it made us at one with the sorrows and the
strivings of the world. All the representative arts are vivid
ways of making us feel with the passions or emotions that
stir mankind. And those men are poets, painters, or musicians
who, besides having a unique gift of expression, whether
in word, tone, or color, have themselves an unusually high
sensitivity to the moods of other men and to the imagined
moods of the natural scenes among which they move.[1]

[Footnote 1: Poets generally are so susceptible to emotional shades and
nuances that they read them into situations where they are not present,
and then reproduce them sympathetically in their works. The so-called
"pathetic fallacy" is an excellent illustration of this. Poets sympathize
with the emotions of a landscape, emotions which were in the first
place, their own.]

In experience, the presence or absence of genuine sympathy
with the emotions of others determines to no small extent the
character of our dealings with them. Even courts of justice
take motives into account and juries have been known to ask
for clemency for a murderer because of their keen realization
of the provocation which he had undergone. Fellow-feeling
with others may again warp our judgments or soften them;
in our judgment of the work of our friends, it is difficult
altogether to discount our personal interest and affection. On
the other hand, we may have the most sincere admiration and
respect for a man, and yet be seriously hampered in our
dealings with him, socially or professionally, by a total lack
of sympathy with his motives and desires.

PRAISE AND BLAME. An important part of man's social
equipment is his susceptibility to the praise and blame of his
fellows. That is, among the things which instinctively satisfy
men are objective marks of praise or approval on the part
of other people; among the things which annoy them, sometimes
to the point of acute distress, are marks of disapproval,
scorn, or blame. This is illustrated most simply and directly
in the satisfaction felt at "intimate approval as by smiles,
pats," kindly words, or epithets applied by other people to
one's own actions or ideas, and the discomfort, amounting
sometimes to pain, that is felt at frowns, hoots, sneers, and
epithets of sco