1.1.1. Chap. I
Of Sympathy
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently
some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune
of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he
derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this
kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the
misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive
it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the
sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any
instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other
original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the
virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the
most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most
hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether
without it.
As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we
can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by
conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.
Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are
at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers.
They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person,
and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception
of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to
this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our
own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own
senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By
the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive
ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were
into his body, and become in some measure the same person with
him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel
something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether
unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home to
ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin
at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the
thought of what he feels. For as to be in pain or distress of any
kind excites the most excessive sorrow, so to conceive or to
imagine that we are in it, excites some degree of the same
emotion, in proportion to the vivacity or dulness of the
conception.
That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery
of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the
sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by
what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations,
if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When
we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm
of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg
or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some
measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob,
when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally
writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him
do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his
situation. Persons of delicate fibres and a weak constitution of
body complain, that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are
exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an
itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent part of their
own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the misery of those
wretches affects that particular part in themselves more than any
other; because that horror arises from conceiving what they
themselves would suffer, if they really were the wretches whom
they are looking upon, and if that particular part in themselves
was actually affected in the same miserable manner. The very
force of this conception is sufficient, in their feeble frames,
to produce that itching or uneasy sensation complained of. Men of
the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they
often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds
from the same reason; that organ being in the strongest man more
delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.
Neither is it those circumstances only, which create pain or
sorrow, that call forth our fellow-feeling. Whatever is the
passion which arises from any object in the person principally
concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his
situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator. Our joy
for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who
interest us, is as sincere as our grief for their distress, and
our fellow-feeling with their misery is not more real than that
with their happiness. We enter into their gratitude towards those
faithful friends who did not desert them in their difficulties;
and we heartily go along with their resentment against those
perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. In
every passion of which the mind of man is susceptible, the
emotions of the by-stander always correspond to hat, by bringing
the case home to himself, he imagines should be the sentiments of
the sufferer.
Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our
fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its
meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however,
without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our
fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.
Upon some occasions sympathy may seen to arise merely from
the view of a certain emotion in another person. The passions,
upon some occasions, may seem to be transfused from one man to
another, instantaneously and antecedent to any knowledge of what
excited them in the person principally concerned. Grief and joy,
for example, strongly expressed in the look and gestures of any
one, at once affect the spectator with some degree of a like
painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to every body
that sees it, a cheerful object; as a sorrowful countenance, on
the other hand, is a melancholy one.
This, however, does not hold universally, or with regard to
every passion. There are some passions of which the expressions
excite no sort of sympathy, but before we are acquainted with
what gave occasion to them, serve rather to disgust and provoke
us against them. The furious behaviour of an angry man is more
likely to exasperate us against himself than against his enemies.
As we are unacquainted with his provocation, we cannot bring his
case home to ourselves, nor conceive any thing like the passions
which it excites. But we plainly see what is the situation of
those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be
exposed from so enraged an adversary. We readily, therefore,
sympathize with their fear or resentment, and are immediately
disposed to take part against the man from whom they appear to be
in so much danger.
If the very appearances of grief and joy inspire us with some
degree of the like emotions, it is because they suggest to us the
general idea of some good or bad fortune that has befallen the
person in whom we observe them: and in these passions this is
sufficient to have some little influence upon us. The effects of
grief and joy terminate in the person who feels those emotions,
of which the expressions do not, like those of resentment,
suggest to us the idea of any other person for whom we are
concerned, and whose interests are opposite to his. The general
idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some concern for
the person who has met with it, but the general idea of
provocation excites no sympathy with the anger of the man who has
received it. Nature, it seems, teaches us to be more averse to
enter into this passion, and, till informed of its cause, to be
disposed rather to take part against it.
Even our sympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we
are informed of the cause of either, is always extremely
imperfect. General lamentations, which express nothing but the
anguish of the sufferer, create rather a curiosity to inquire
into his situation, along with some disposition to sympathize
with him, than any actual sympathy that is very sensible. The
first question which we ask is, What has befallen you? Till this
be answered, though we are uneasy both from the vague idea of his
misfortune, and still more from torturing ourselves with
conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not
very considerable.
Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of
the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it. We
sometimes feel for another, a passion of which he himself seems
to be altogether incapable; because, when we put ourselves in his
case, that passion arises in our breast from the imagination,
though it does not in his from the reality. We blush for the
impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself appears to
have no sense of the impropriety of his own behaviour; because we
cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves should be
covered, had we behaved in so absurd a manner.
Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality
exposes mankind, the loss of reason appears, to those who have
the least spark of humanity, by far the most dreadful, and they
behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper
commiseration than any other. But the poor wretch, who is in it,
laughs and sings perhaps, and is altogether insensible of his own
misery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the sight
of such an object, cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of
the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator must arise
altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel
if he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what
perhaps is impossible, was at the same time able to regard it
with his present reason and judgment.
What are the pangs of a mother, when she hears the moanings
of her infant that during the agony of disease cannot express
what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, she joins, to its
real helplessness, her own consciousness of that helplessness,
and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorder;
and out of all these, forms, for her own sorrow, the most
complete image of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels
only the uneasiness of the present instant, which can never be
great. With regard to the future, it is perfectly secure, and in
its thoughtlessness and want of foresight, possesses an antidote
against fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human
breast, from which reason and philosophy will, in vain, attempt
to defend it, when it grows up to a man.
We sympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of
real importance in their situation, that awful futurity which
awaits them, we are chiefly affected by those circumstances which
strike our senses, but can have no influence upon their
happiness. It is miserable, we think, to be deprived of the light
of the sun; to be shut out from life and conversation; to be laid
in the cold grave, a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the
earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be
obliterated, in a little time, from the affections, and almost
from the memory, of their dearest friends and relations. Surely,
we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have
suffered so dreadful a calamity. The tribute of our
fellow-feeling seems doubly due to them now, when they are in
danger of being forgot by every body; and, by the vain honours
which we pay to their memory, we endeavour, for our own misery,
artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their
misfortune. That our sympathy can afford them no consolation
seems to be an addition to their calamity; and to think that all
we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other
distress, the regret, the love, and the lamentations of their
friends, can yield no comfort to them, serves only to exasperate
our sense of their misery. The happiness of the dead, however,
most assuredly, is affected by none of these circumstances; nor
is it the thought of these things which can ever disturb the
profound security of their repose. The idea of that dreary and
endless melancholy, which the fancy naturally ascribes to their
condition, arises altogether from our joining to the change which
has been produced upon them, our own consciousness of that
change, from our putting ourselves in their situation, and from
our lodging, if I may be allowed to say so, our own living souls
in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be
our emotions in this case. It is from this very illusion of the
imagination, that the foresight of our own dissolution is so
terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which
undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us
miserable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the
most important principles in human nature, the dread of death,
the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon
the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies
the individual, guards and protects the society.