Sympathy

Use in the book

A report about Plato denies that divine intellect shares the affections of mutable nature. Conversely, the Hermetic narrative says that the maker ordained things below to share in the affections of those above, grounding corresponding sacred rites. The relation can therefore be asserted at one level and denied at another.

Places to read

1. I.1.29b.6Separated intellect is described as not sharing mutable nature’s affections.
2. I.49.44.79Correspondence between upper and lower things grounds earthly rites.

Translation in this edition

“Sharing affections” clarifies the physical or cosmic relation. Retain “sympathy” when its technical meaning has been explained.

Use in the book

In the survey of human powers, sympathy appears beside love to virtue, while tenderness and compassion are separately named as capacities uniting a person to others. The distinction matters. Sympathy here is part of the soul’s native responsiveness to excellence, rather than a synonym that absorbs every form of fellow-feeling.

The larger argument asks why God gave these inclinations. Each fits a person for particular objects and forms of enjoyment: compassion for persons, emulation for examples, admiration for divine beauty. Sympathy belongs to that purposeful equipment. Properly directed, the soul does not contemplate virtue as an indifferent spectator but finds itself disposed to approve and love it.

Places to read

1. III.42Sympathy and love to virtue are included among the soul’s purposive inclinations.

In this edition

The single explicit occurrence does not establish a technical theory of universal natural sympathy. Read it with its stated object, virtue, and distinguish it from the separately named compassion.

Use in the book

The unexplained sympathies of March 1833 link natural impressions with memories whose outward cause cannot be seen. This is the word's widest reach: different regions of life answer one another without the speaker being able to map their connection.

In July the imagined visitor to Guérin's microscopic intellectual domain comes because sympathy has led them to knock. Smallness need not forbid hospitality or genuine exchange. The scene modestly rescales poetry, philosophy, discovery, and friendship so that inward life remains shareable despite wounded ambition.

The notebook's great apostrophe gives sympathy an even more intimate function. The living cahier understands a language others do not, guesses sorrow, participates in joy, and offers an affection unspoiled by pride. Crucially, this desired relation is unequal: a stronger soul would stoop to support a weaker one. Guérin's ideal is not merely the easy attraction of similar, admirable people. It includes patience and the willingness to remain beside an obscure, vulnerable life.

Across these uses sympathy is a power of making contact. It explains neither nature scientifically nor friendship institutionally; it names the responsive bond by which isolation becomes less absolute.

Places to read

1. 28 March 1833 · ¶1Unknown sympathies support the correspondence of personal memory and the soul of nature.
2. 4 July 1833 · ¶1Sympathy brings a welcome visitor into the speaker's deliberately miniature intellectual household.
3. 20 April 1834 · ¶1The notebook is endowed with pure sympathy, and the imagined human equivalent is an unequal relation of compassionate care.

Translation in this edition

The English retains “sympathy,” but the surrounding French range includes “compassion,” “charité,” and “patience.” In the notebook apostrophe the word is richer than merely agreeing with someone's opinion.

Use in the book

Ficino uses the world's cooperation as an argument for one animating source. Its members can be contrary in qualities and separated in place while communicating their powers and acting together. He asks what could account for this unless a single soul tempers the diverse humors of the immense living being and connects its members through harmony of life and motion. The vocabulary deliberately draws on the organized body: sympathy is a sharing of affects and actions across a whole, not merely emotional fellow-feeling between people. Nor does it abolish difference or require every component to have the same function. Its significance lies in coordinated difference. The proposed explanation proceeds from common action to common nature, and from common nature to one soul. The conclusion is a metaphysical inference within his account of shared action and its sufficient cause.

Further passage references. IV.1.82–IV.1.832; apparatus

Places to read

1. IV.1.82Contrary and separated members communicate powers; one soul tempers their diverse humors and coordinates their motion.
2. IV.1.83The world-animal’s unity requires soul wholly present throughout its body and nature.

Translation in this edition

“Are in sympathy” translates compatiantur as the edition’s technical image of joint feeling and activity. The qualification ut ita loquar keeps the extension to cosmic members visible as figurative language within a substantive causal argument.

conspirare / compati

conspirare / compati. Printed forms: compatiantur; conspirant.

To act together; to share affections or responses. Contrary cosmic members cooperate and communicate powers, supporting a common nature and soul. References: IV.1.82. See Sympathy.

contemperare / continuare

contemperare / continuare. Printed forms: contemperat; continuat.

To temper together; to bind in continuity. One soul coordinates diverse humors and joins members separated by position and quality. References: IV.1.82. See Sympathy.

humor / humores

humor / humores. Printed forms: humores.

Bodily fluids or humors in the organism and the world-body analogy. The world-soul tempers diverse humors within the cosmic animal; in the human comparison thought and affect stir spirits and humors. Humores and spiritus are coordinated terms, not synonyms or merely modern moods. References: IV.1.82, IV.2.16. See Sympathy.