In The Nature of Sympathy, Scheler begins with a description of the phenomenon of sympathy, and then puts forth the idea that man is a social being, immersed within his community to know and love his neighbours. From his analysis, he emphasizes the fact that one's knowledge has the social dimension through which the knowledge of his community serves as the background and foundation of his personal knowledge. And this insight becomes the main theme of his later work, Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. Hence, we may rightly say that Scheler's analysis of sympathy is actually the starting point of his sociology of knowledge.