Sympathy can be defined as the feelings of pity or sorrow for someone else's misfortune, whereas having empathy is more of a mental trait that lets you identify with a person by an experience of feelings, thoughts, and attitudes of that person. Empathy is more thinking about the feeling then just considering it. Empathy is an essential tool for historians so that they have a deeper insight into the motives and thoughts of certain historical figures or actions made by the subject who is being studied. This is important so that they may understand why a certain person did something instead of judging them quickly and forming premature opinions. Without empathy, historians might have a skewed view on many topics which will cause them to have a narrow mind scape and prohibit them from being able to discover and dig deeper.