ABSTRACT
Genuine acts of fellow-feeling have positive moral value, though this is by no means true of heteropathic emotions in general. Fellow-feeling possesses this value in its own right; it is not occasioned by the acts of beneficence which come about through fellow-feeling, and pity especially. For 'A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved; joy shared is joy doubled' is one of the few proverbs which brook examination from the moral point of view. However, it is one of the marks of genuineness in pity that it should lead to acts of beneficence. The foregoing evaluation is naturally quite different to that of the Ethics of Sympathy which holds that sympathy is the source of moral value generally. On this view, sympathy has literally no positive value, though all moral values are said to acquire their value only by virtue of their connection with sympathy.
