24 MARCH 1894, Page 15

THE PAINS AND PLEASURES OF SYMPATHY. [To THE EDITOR OP

THE " SPECTATOR."]

:"But,—Your correspondent, "J. D.," questions the accuracy of your statement, in the interesting article in the Spectator of March 10th, that a physician's experience renders his sym- pathy " deeper and truer by far than that of the ordinary -observer," and he concludes with the following query :- Does not the daily familiarity with suffering, and the strenuous effort to relieve it, tend, and very rightly, to diminish the intensity of a physician's sympathy ? " I venture to say that an affirmative reply to this question would be but a partial and inadequate statement of the .truth. Bishop Butler, in the fifth chapter of his " Analogy," has admirably set forth the general principle that, while passive impressions are weakened by repetition, the active habits which they tend to engender are being strengthened. Ile says, " Perception of distress in others is a natural excite- ment passively to pity and actively to relieve it; but let a man set himself to attend to, inquire out, and relieve dis- tressed persons, and he cannot but grow less and less sensibly affected with the various miseries of life, with which be must become acquainted; when yet, at the same time, benevolence, considered not as a passion, but as a practical principle of action, will strengthen, and whilst he passively compassionates the distressed less, he will acquire a greater aptitude actively to assist and relieve them."

' " J. D." has omitted to state what perhaps he would be ready • to acknowledge, that by a process of moral evolution passive sympathy is transformed into beneficent action.—I am,