“Yes,” said Florence; “I think that pity is.”
“Pity?” I said. “Yes—perhaps. Still, that is somewhat different. Pity was good once, because it was feeling, and feeling is the root of all understanding and sympathy. But self-torturing pity seems to me a weakness. Sympathy is quite a different, a stronger, a braver thing. Who agrees with me?”
First, they said, would I explain exactly what I meant?
“Sympathy seems to me understanding and love, such as you have for yourself. You are willing to suffer, since it is a part of life and a part of the way. You want to suffer for the cause, if necessary; not otherwise. But you don’t pity yourself. You would be ashamed to make so much of your pain. So you do not pity others. You love them, you feel with them, you help them bravely. You can bear their pain without making a fuss over them, as you would bear your own. You consider them as strong and brave as yourself.”
They all agreed with me, save Virginia. She said: “If I step by accident on the foot of a little dog, and he cries out, then that hurts me. And I think it is good, because then I know how I would feel if I were a little dog, and I try not to do it again. Isn’t that pity?”
“Perhaps,” I said; “we are apt to pity lower creatures. But there is no good in the mere feeling of physical pain that goes with such things, of the pain and thrill up and down your spine when you hurt any creature accidentally, and hear it cry out.”
“Don’t you think,” asked Alfred, “it is only because they cry out that we feel it?”
“Maybe,” I said, “for the cry makes us know of the pain. At one time, however, a virtue was made of the mere suffering with others; and I suppose in its good time this was necessary, because it developed the feeling which makes sympathy possible.”
“I think it is good,” said Virginia, “for when my sister was ill, I did not know how she felt, or understood her, and so I couldn’t sympathize with her; but later I understood, and then I wished I had felt with her as she did. It would have been better.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “for it would have taught you to feel. To know how others feel is the best thing in the world. But to let that feeling overcome and crush you, to pity them, is weakness. I think it is a weakness we have all felt, and longed to overcome, when we suffered so much with others that we were unable to act.”