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 exaggerate the extent and the magnitude of the influence it exerts in
forming the character and shaping the ideas and opinions of men, and in
regulating all their ordinary habits of thought and feeling. People's
opinions are not generally formed or controlled by arguments or reasonings,
as they fondly suppose. They are imbibed by sympathy from those whom they
like or love, and who are, or have been, their associates. Thus people,
when they arrive at maturity, adhere in the main to the associations, both
in religion and in politics, in which they have been brought up, from the