"The word is first recorded in English in the Philosophical Review in 1895, in a summary by E L Hinman of a paper by Kurd Lasswitz, a Kantean philosopher and science fiction writer, who influenced Jorge Luis Borges. Lasswitz used the word Einfühlung, “aesthetic sympathy”, which Robert Vischer had coined in 1873.
Hinman translated it as “empathy”, “a physical quantity, a physiological brain-function, . . . the relation of the whole energy at any change of the central organ to the intensity.” There were, however, earlier instances of Empathie in German, borrowed from French."
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . A word about empathy October 14, 2016