COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



higher and higher orders of complexity. For 

 by this long-continued process the opportuni- 

 ties for the exercise of the altruistic feelings have 

 been necessarily increased in number and fre- 

 quency of occurrence, while the occasions re- 

 quiring the exercise of the anti-social feelings 

 have become less frequent, so that the former 

 set of feelings have become strengthened by use, 

 while the latter have become relatively weak- 

 ened by disuse. Along with this direct and ob- 

 vious effect of social integration, another effect 

 has been wrought, indirect and less obvious, 

 A high development of sympathy cannot be 

 secured without a high development of repre- 

 sentativeness, so closely interrelated are our 

 intellectual and moral natures. A very feeble 

 faculty of imagining objects and relations not 

 present to sense must necessitate an absence of 

 active sympathetic emotion, save in its crudest 

 form. It is a familiar fact that many men are 

 cruel, in word or deed, because they are inca- 

 pable of adequately representing to themselves 

 the pain, physical or mental, of which they are 

 the cause. The validity of such an interpreta- 

 tion is confirmed by the fact that even where 

 there is very high representative capacity, the 

 lack of the requisite elements of personal expe- 

 rience will prevent the rise of sympathetic feel- 

 ing. Thus it is notoriously difficult for strong 

 and healthy people to enter into the feelings of 

 148 



