Sympathy, in the etymological sense (σῦν, πάθος), which is also the complete one, consists in the existence of identical conditions in two or more individuals of the same or a different species; or, according to Bain, the tendency of an individual to enter into the active or emotional states of others, these states being revealed by certain media of expression. In its general and original form it is that and nothing else. We must therefore begin by getting rid of a prejudice, consecrated by usage in various languages, which identifies sympathy with pity, tenderness, benevolence, and the feelings which establish a tie of concord and a state of reciprocity between two beings. Thus understood, in its restricted sense, the term sympathy is neither accurate nor sufficient; for in all benevolent inclinations there are, besides the general fact of sympathy, other emotional elements, which will be determined in their proper place. Before it becomes moral, before even it becomes psychological, it is biological. At bottom, it is a property of life, and its complete study would be a chapter of general psychology. If, limiting ourselves to what is strictly necessary, we try to follow the evolution of sympathy, from its most rudimentary to its highest forms, we distinguish three principal phases. The first, or physiological, consists in an agreement of motor tendencies, a _synergia_; the second, or psychological, consists in an agreement of the emotional states, a _synæsthesia_; the third, or intellectual, results from a community of representations or ideas, connected with feelings and movements. _First Phase._—In its primitive form sympathy is reflex, automatic, unconscious, or very slightly conscious; it is, according to Bain, the tendency to produce in ourselves an attitude, a state, a bodily movement which we perceive in another person. This is imitation in its most rudimentary form. Between sympathy and imitation, at any rate in this primitive period, I see only one difference of aspect: sympathy everywhere marks the passive, receptive side of the phenomenon—imitation, its active and motor side.[144] Footnote 144: