[26]. This idea that social persons are not mutually exclusive but composed largely of common elements is implied in Professor William James’s doctrine of the Social Self and set forth at more length in Professor James Mark Baldwin’s Social and Ethical Interpretations of Mental Development. Like other students of social psychology I have received much instruction and even more helpful provocation from the latter brilliant and original work. To Professor James my obligation is perhaps greater still.
[27]. I distinguish, of course, between egotism, which is an English word of long standing, and egoism, which was, I believe, somewhat recently introduced by moralists to designate, in antithesis to altruism, certain theories or facts of ethics. I do not object to these words as names of theories, but as purporting to be names of facts of conduct I do, and have in mind more particularly their use by Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Psychology and other works. As used by Spencer they seem to me valid from a physiological standpoint only, and fallacious when employed to describe mental, social, or moral facts. The trouble is, as with his whole system, that the physiological aspect of life is expounded and assumed, apparently, to be the only aspect that science can consider. Having ventured to find fault with Spencer, I may be allowed to add that I have perhaps learned as much from him as from any other writer. If only his system did not appear at first quite so complete and final one might more easily remain loyal to it in spite of its deficiencies. But when these latter begin to appear its very completeness makes it seem a sort of a prison-wall which one must break down to get out.
I shall try to show the nature of egotism and selfishness in Chapter VI.
[28]. Some may question whether we can pity ourselves in this way. But it seems to me that we avoid self-pity only by not vividly imagining ourselves in a piteous plight; and that if we do so imagine ourselves the sentiment follows quite naturally.
[29]. Sympathy in the sense of compassion is a specific emotion or sentiment, and has nothing necessarily in common with sympathy in the sense of communion. It might be thought, perhaps, that compassion was one form of the sharing of feeling; but this appears not to be the case. The sharing of painful feeling may precede and cause compassion, but is not the same with it. When I feel sorry for a man in disgrace, it is, no doubt, in most cases, because I have imaginatively partaken of his humiliation; but my compassion for him is not the thing that is shared, but is something additional, a comment on the shared feeling. I may imagine how a suffering man feels—sympathize with him in that sense—and be moved not to pity but to disgust, contempt, or perhaps admiration. Our feeling makes all sorts of comments on the imagined feeling of others. Moreover it is not essential that there should be any real understanding in order that compassion may be felt. One may compassionate a worm squirming on a hook, or a fish, or even a tree. As between persons pity, while often a helpful and healing emotion, leading to kindly acts, is sometimes indicative of the absence of true sympathy. We all wish to be understood, at least in what we regard as our better aspects, but few of us wish to be pitied except in moments of weakness and discouragement. To accept pity is to confess that one falls below the healthy standard of vigor and self-help. While a real understanding of our deeper thought is rare and precious, pity is usually cheap, many people finding an easy pleasure in indulging it, as one may in the indulgence of grief, resentment, or almost any emotion. It is often felt by the person who is its object as a sort of an insult, a back-handed thrust at self-respect, the unkindest cut of all. For instance, as between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, and is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling.
[30]. Much of what is ordinarily said in this connection indicates a confusion of the two ideas of specialization and isolation. These are not only different but, in what they imply, quite opposite and inconsistent. Speciality implies a whole to which the special part has a peculiar relation, while isolation implies that there is no whole.
[31]. See his Essay on Friendship.
[32]. Lewes’s Life of Goethe, vol. i, p. 282.
[33]. Goethe, Biographische Einzelheiten, Jacobi.
[34]. “I had to love him, for with him my life grew to such life as I had never known.”—Act 3, sc. 2.