Empathy, an orientation of spirit decidedly different from sympathy , has become central to our moral universe. We celebrate it as the hallmark of a noble spirit , a pillar of social justice , and the gateway to reaching our highest human potential — a centerpiece of our very humanity. And yet this conception of empathy is a little more than a century old and originated in art: It only entered the modern lexicon in the early twentieth century, when it was used to describe the imaginative act of projecting oneself into a work of art in an effort to understand why art moves us.…