Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/533

 METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 5 I ^

tent into which to receive it; and, just so, the actions of an indi- vidual in a society will mean much more, and in fact attain their true significance, only when, in the first place, we who try to explain and interpret that act recognize that they have the same sort of processes as ourselves, i. e., when we recognize that they are of like kind with ourselves, and when we interpret what they have done in terms of our own inner content. Another example of this can be taken from common life, when one person says of the action of another : " I cannot understand why he did that." This means that the one cannot conceive of himself acting in the given way under similar circumstances. It seems to me that here the heightened enjoyment as well as comprehension for we are told that consciousness of kind is a pleasurable state as well is a direct result of a sympathetic appreciation of the other's actions, and that this contention is directly supported by the argument in Adam Smith's Theory of the Moral Sentiments. 38 That sym- pathy is important in consciousness of kind is shown by the fact that Professor Giddings mentions it twice in his definition : first as organic sympathy, and then as conscious and reflective sym- pathy. How nearly reflective sympathy and appreciation are related is shown by the fact that the modern doctrines of appre- ciation seem to have had their source historically in Adam Smith's doctrine of sympathy.

Professor Bain speaks of

the characteristic moment of the sympathetic impulse the being laid hold of and engrossed by those suggested feelings as connected with another person; the taking that person altogether into our own mental grasp, to the setting aside of our own personality.

T. H. Green says:

Sympathy involves such a conceived identity or unity in difference between the spectator's own person and the other that the same impression in being determined also by the consciousness of the other is an " alter-ego." Thus sympathy .... is found to involve the determination between pleasure and pain, not merely by self-consciousness, but by the self-consciousness which is also self-identification with another. 40

"Vol. I, Part I, sec. i. "Emotions and Will, p. 121.

"Introduction to Hume, Vol. II, sec. 40.