Sympathy

 

Sympathy is the purest expression of social feeling. Whenever we find sympathy in human beings we can generally be sure that they are mature individuals with a social conscience, because sympathy is a good yardstick of how far human beings are able to identify with others.

Perhaps more widespread than the genuine feeling is its conventional misuse. This consists of posing as an extremely public-spirited, exaggeratedly sympathetic individual. Thus there are people who crowd to the scene of a disaster to achieve a mention in the newspapers and get themselves noticed without actually doing anything to help the victims. Others seem to take a delight in tracking down people suffering a misfortune. Professional sympathizers and alms-givers will not easily give up their activity, for they are actually building a feeling of their own superiority out of the sufferings of the miserable or poverty-stricken victims whom they purport to be helping. 

As that wise judge of human nature, La Rochefoucauld, said: ‘We can always find a measure of satisfaction in the misfortunes of our friends.’

A mistaken attempt has been made to relate our enjoyment of tragic drama to this phenomenon. It has been said that the onlooker feels superior to the characters on stage. But this is not true for most people; our interest in dramatic tragedy originates for the most part in a desire for self-knowledge and self-instruction. We do not lose sight of the fact that it is only a play, and we make use of the experience to give us an added impetus in our approach to life’s problems.

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