ABSTRACT

There are several genetic theories of fellow-feeling which, whatever their explanatory value, prove unequal to the phenomenological factors that were dwelt upon. Emotional infection between individuals can thus occur over a gap in time, there being here no trace of the usual sense of 'reliving' the experience and no consciousness of the fact of transmission. A peculiar mixture of genuine fellowship with subservience is to be found in the relationship of 'patriarchal' authority between parents and children, or master and man. The genetic association-theory overlooks the very existence of pure fellow-feeling as such, just as it ignores the possibility of pure remembering, and of a pure intuition indivisible into sensory constituents. While the understanding and sharing of mental, and still more of spiritual feelings, is completely independent of all such gulfs between the contingent personal backgrounds of individuals. Jesus' despair in Gethsemane can be understood and shared regardless of our historical, racial and even human limitations.