THE PAINS AND PLEASURES OF SYMPATHY.
WHY should the universal pain with which the world has heard of Mr. Gladstone's failing eyesight tend to diminish the pain with which he and his family have realised the approach of that misfortune, while the comparative indif- ference with which they heard of the approach of his deafness tended rather, if it made any impression at all, to increase the bitterness of that privation P It is certain that, in the case of all serious troubles, a pang which we share with others is attenuated by that participation, while a pang which is con- fined absolutely to our own breasts is all the sharper for that strict insulation. We say "of all serious troubles," because this is not true generally in relation to trivial and temporary annoyances ; it is generally easier to bear a toothache or a headache without sympathy or pity than with it, while it is much easier to bear a heavy misfortune with sympathy than without it. Eager and serious compassion is almost always a genuine relief, while any sympathetic expression which is trivial and casual rather revolts a man's pride than lightens his burden. We are vexed if any one hears that we have lost the train or had a petty mortification, but it is an alleviation of any trouble to be the object of such hearty and earnest com- miseration as Mr. Gladstone has received in the apparently sudden arrest of his overflowing vitality. We suppose the reason to be that in the one case there is something of con- descension in the regret which is expressed, while in the other there is nothing but pure fellow-feeling, pure sense of loss ; and we seldom like to be regarded with any emotion which has a tincture in it of the feeling of superiority, though we are soothed by seeing our own distress genuinely reflected in the hearts and countenances of others. It makes us smaller in our own eyes to feel small in the eyes of others ; but it awakens a new regard for those others, which is in itself healing, to know that they are so much at one with us as to shrink from our pain, and to rejoice in any reawakening of our hopes. In the latter case, we feel an enlargement of our own nature ; in the former, something at least of a dubious and double experience, a contraction of the heart under the condescending character of the pity, as well as a certain ex- pansion under the consciousness that our pain is not quite indifferent to a considerable number of other minds. From anything like amused sympathy, such as we give to a baby's griefs, the mind usually shrinks, and yet from genuine sympathy itself, even though it be not altogether untinged with the sense that it is a smiling sympathy, we derive comfort. So that this is the singular condition of things, —we suffer the less when others suffer most nearly as we do, but when their suffering is softened and almost extin- guished by their appreciation of the transitory character of our own, and of the exaggerated importance we attach to it, we are so much the less soothed by their fellow-feeling, because it wants the keenness and exaggeration of our own.
From this it would appear that while disinterested sympathy with our happiness is a clear addition to that happiness, and, As in the endless gallery which opposite mirrors produce, is reflected back and back again in long perspective, disinterested sympathy with our sufferings, even though it adds so much to the painful emotions of the world, is a clear diminution of those we ourselves experience; nay, that anything which alleviates and diminishes the poignancy of that sympathy, so as to render the reflected pang, whatever it be, less severe in the breast of the sympathiser, detracts from the effectiveness of that sympathy,—which means that we do not really regret the pain which our sufferings cause to those who give us their sympathy, but, on the other hand, rather regret anything which tempers it, and makes it less vivid. There are very few who have trained them- selves so far as to wish to soften the pain of those who enter into their sufferings, more than they wish to feel the balm of that genial sympathy. Sympathetic pain, often very real, is rarely indeed so real to those whose original troubles cause it, as to make them desirous to diminish it even by depriving themselves of the assuaging influence of that softened reflection of their own pangs. No doubt the sufferer feels that this sympathetic pain,—real as it may be,—is still so much fainter than that which it reflects, that it would be no true kindness to those who feel it to deprive them of their power of experiencing as it were, at second-hand, and in a very attenuated form, the troubles to which others are ex- posed. To understand the troubles of others may well be
more than a compensation for the half-imaginative pains which these troubles cause.
Nor can we doubt that this compensation for the painfulness of sympathy with pain, is far more than enough to swallow up all its bitterness, for such suffering is quite inseparable from the exercise of a kind of faculty without which life would not be worth living. Let any man conceive what it would mean to be excluded from the power of entering into the suffering of others, whether dear to him, or even only interesting. It would not only mean practical exclusion from all the experi- ence of social life, but from all the pleasures of poetry and literature which depend entirely on this qualification for entering by imagination into the heart of a new mental and moral interior. And it is obvious that one could not have the gains of that sort of vivid sympathy without having its losses also. No one ever had, or could have, the gift for entering heartily into others' joy without having also the gift for entering heartily into others' sorrow. Nothing illus- trates this better than the sort of limitations which seem to be placed on the range of ordinary men's sympathies. For example, we all feel keenly with the pain of those who have lost, or are threatened with the prospect of losing, the use of the eyes,—for we all know, and know by daily experience, the wealth of power, the great variety of experience, the large store of satisfactions and pleasures to which the gift of vision is the only key. But we do not know equally well, till we actually experience it, what we should lose by deafness. It requires a much more vivid imagination to enter into the deprivations which deafness involves, and therefore there is much less general sympathy with the deaf than there is with the blind, though it is not certain that, for many people at least,—those to whom the world of books and scenery is not a world of the highest significance,—the loss of hearing is not almost as great a loss as that of vision. There is probably deeper sympathy with the blind than there is even with the victims of acutely painful diseases, for the simple reason that we can all appreciate fully what an enormous proportion of our life consists in vision, while, fortunately, very few of us know what acute and prolonged suffering really means. Indeed, sympathy varies almost directly with the power of appreciating the calamities of others ; and the power of appreciating those calamities is generally greatest where the calamities are very widely spread, and have come within almost every man's direct observation. Now, this is not at all the case with the greater and most agonising pains. And consequently, no doubt, such misfortunes as blindness receive much more adequate sym- pathy than those which arise from nervous depression, or those too numerous internal sufferings which cannot be described or explained. Consider, again, the vast difference between the sympathy which a great physician (whose ex- perience has taught him where the severest anguish is suf- fered) can give to the victims of painful diseases, and that which ordinary men can give to them. The physician's experience has enlarged indefinitely the range of his imagination in this department of human trouble, and the consequence is that his sympathy is deeper and truer by far than that of the ordinary observer. He interprets the trouble of one patient by the troubles of a hundred others whose cases he has studied, and so is enabled to fill up all the gaps in the story of the new sufferer. And no physician would willingly give up this power of seeing into the sufferings of others, though it must often bring with it very deep and very irremediable pain,—the pain not only of knowing what his patients are suffering, but of knowing also that he can do nothing effectual to relieve their sufferings. We are convinced, nevertheless, that great powers of sympathy, though they involve great pain, involve, by way of compensation, and much more than compensation, so large an experience of life that they add greatly to the interest and vividness and general significance of existence, instead of merely deepening its gloom.
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