If we study the evolution of human sympathy we find that it begins,
not in reference to animals but to human beings. The first stage is a
mother's feeling going out to her child. Next, the family as a whole
is included, and then the tribe. An Australian kills, as a matter of
course, everyone he comes across in the wilderness not belonging to
his tribe. To the present day race hatred, jingoism, and religious
differences obstruct the growth of cosmopolitan sympathy such as
Christ demanded. His religion has done much, however, to widen the
circle of sympathy and to make known its ravishing delights. The
doctrine that it is more blessed to give than to receive is literally
true for those who are of a sympathetic disposition. Parents enjoy the
pleasures of their children as they never did their own egotistic
delights. In various ways sympathy has continued to grow, and at the
present day the most refined and tender men and women include animals
within the range of their pity and affection. We organize societies
for their protection, and we protest against the slaughter of birds
that live on islands, thousands of miles away. Our imagination has
become so sensitive and vivid that it gives us a keen pang to think of
the happy lives of these birds as being ruthlessly cut short and their
young left to die in their nests in the agonies of cruel starvation.
If we compare with this state of mind that of the African of whom
Burton wrote in his _Two Trips to Gorilla Land_, that "Cruelty seems
to be with him a necessity of life, and all his highest enjoyments are
connected with causing pain and inflicting death"--we need no other
argument to convince us that a savage cannot possibly feel romantic
love, because that implies a capacity for the tenderest and subtlest
sympathy. I would sooner believe a tiger capable of such love than a
savage, for the tiger practises cruelty unconsciously and accidentally
while in quest of food, whereas the primitive man indulges in cruelty
for cruelty's sake, and for the delight it gives him. We have here one
more illustration of the change and growth of sentiments. Man's
emotions develop as well as his reasoning powers, and one might as
well expect an Australian, who cannot count five, to solve a problem
in trigonometry as to love a woman as we love her.
AMOROUS SYMPATHY
In romantic love altruism reaches its climax. Turgenieff did not
exaggerate when he said that "it is in a man really in love as if his
personality were eliminated." Genuine love makes a man shed egoism as
a snake sheds its skin. His one thought is: "How can I make her happy
and save her from grief" at whatever cost to his own comfort. Amorous
sympathy implies a complete self-surrender, an exchange of
personalities:
My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given.
--_Sidney_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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