at mystery in the nature of it, and in the manner of its
action. This we see very clearly in the simplest and most striking material
form of it--the act of gaping. Why and how does the witnessing of the act
of gaping in one person, or even the thought of it, produce a tendency
to the same action in the nerves and muscles of another person? When we
attempt to trace the chain of connection through the eye, the brain, and
the thoughts--through which line of agencies the chain of cause and effect
must necessarily run--we are lost and bewildered.

Other states and conditions in which the mental element is more apparent
are communicated from one to another in the same or, at least, in some
analogous way. Being simply in the presence of one who is amused, or happy,
or sad, causes us to feel amused, or happy, or sad ourselves--or, at least,
has that tendency--even if we do not know from what cause the emotion which
is communicated to us proceeds. A person of a joyous and happy disposition
often brightens up at once any little circle into which he enters, while
a morose and melancholy man carries gloom with him wherever he goes.
Eloquence, which, if we were to hear it addressed to us personally and
individually, in private conversation, would move us very little, will
excite us to a pitch of the highest enthusiasm if we hear it in the midst
of a vast audience; even though the words, and the gestures, and the
inflections of the voice, and the force with which it reaches our ears,
were to be precisely the same in the two cases. And so a joke, which would
produce only a quiet smile if we read it by ourselves at the fireside
alone, will evoke convulsions of laughter when heard in a crowded theatre,
where the hilarity is shared by thousands.

A new element, indeed, seems to come into action in these last two cases;
for the mental condition of one mind is not only communicated to another,
but it appears to be increased and intensified by the communication. Each
does not feel _merely_ the enthusiasm or the mirth which would naturally
be felt by the other, but the general emotion is vastly heightened by its
being so largely shared. It is like the case of the live coal, which does
not merely set the dead coal on fire by being placed in contact with it,
but the two together, when together, burn far more brightly than when
apart.

_Wonderful Power of Sympathy_.

So much for the reality of this principle; and it is almost impossible
to e