APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 9? 



thus to imitate for the pure pleasure of it. And there is 

 no such another emotional chameleon. By a purely 

 reflex operation of the mind, we take the hue of 

 passion of those who are about us, or, it may be, the 

 complementary colour. It is not by any conscious 

 " putting one's self in the place " of a joyful or a suffer- 

 ing person that the state of mind we call sympathy 

 usually arises ; indeed, it is often contrary to one's 

 sense of right, and in spite of one's will, that " fellow- 

 feeling makes us wondrous kind," or the reverse. 

 However complete may be the indifference to public 

 opinion, in a cool, intellectual view, of the traditional 

 sage, it has not yet been my fortune to meet with 

 any actual sage who took its hostile manifestations 

 with entire equanimity. Indeed, I doubt if the 

 philosopher lives, or ever has lived, who could know 

 himself to be heartily despised by a street boy with- 

 out some irritation. And, though one cannot justify 

 Haman for wishing to hang Mordecai on such a very 

 high gibbet, yet, really, the consciousness of the 

 Vizier of Ahasuerus, as ha went in and out of the 

 gate, that this obscure Jew had no respect for him, 

 must have been very annoying. 



It is needful only to look around us, to see that 

 the greatest restramer of the anti-social tendencies 

 of men is fear, not of the law, but of the opinion of 

 their fellows. The conventions of honour bind men 

 who break legal, moral, and religious bonds ; and, 

 while people endure the extremity of physical pain 

 rather than part with life, shame drives the weakest 

 to suicide. 



Every forward step of social progress brings men 

 into closer relations with their fellows, and increases 

 the importance of the pleasures and pains derived 

 from sympathy. We judge the acts of others by 

 our own sympathies, and we judge our own acts 

 by the sympathies of others, every day and all 

 day long, from childhood upwards, until associations, 

 as indissoluble as those of language, are formed 

 between certain acts and the feelings of approbation 



