While thus singing, each child experiences the same
joyous or sad feelings as its classmates, and learns in this way the
great moral lesson of _sympathy_. And this brings us back to what was
said a moment ago regarding the vice of cruelty. Sympathy is the
correlative and antidote of cruelty. If savages were not utterly
devoid of sympathy, they would not take such strange delight in
witnessing the cruel tortures they inflict upon their prisoners.
Indeed, it may be asserted that almost all crimes spring from a lack
of sympathy, and modified forms of cruelty. If you reflect a moment,
you must admit that a man who is truly sympathetic--that is, who
rejoices in his neighbor's happiness and grieves over his
misfortunes--can be neither ungenerous, nor deceitful, nor covetous,
nor jealous, nor ferocious, nor avaricious, etc.; and one need not
therefore be a pantheist to agree with Schopenhauer, that Mitleid, or
sympathy, is the basis of all virtues. If, therefore, it can be shown
that music is a powerful agent in developing this feeling of sympathy,
its far-reaching moral value will become apparent.
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