Compassion

The desire of the happiness or misery of others is an arbitrary and original instinct implanted in our nature. It may:

• be counterfeited on many occasions
• arise from secondary principles.

Pity is a concern for the misery of others.

Malice is a joy in the misery of others.

In both, no friendship or enmity occasions this concern or joy.

• We pity even strangers who are perfectly indifferent to us.

If our ill-will to another proceed from any harm or injury, it is not malice, but revenge.

Pity and malice are secondary affections arising from original ones which are varied by some turn of thought and imagination.

It will be easy to explain pity from the precedent reasoning on sympathy.

We have a lively idea of everything related to us.

All human creatures are related to us by resemblance.

Therefore, their persons, interests, passions, pains and pleasures must:

• strike us in a lively manner
• produce an emotion similar to the original one.

Since a lively idea is easily converted into an impression.

If this is true in general, it must be more true of affliction and sorrow.

These always have a stronger and more lasting influence than any pleasure or enjoyment.

A spectator of a tragedy passes through a long train of grief, terror, indignation, and other affections, which the poet represents in his poem’s characters.

Many tragedies end happily.

• All excellent tragedies have some reverses of fortune.

The spectator must:

• sympathize with all these changes
• receive the fictitious joy as well as every other passion.

All passions arise from that principle, unless every distinct passion:

• is communicated by a distinct original quality,
• is not derived from the general principle of sympathy above-explained.

It is highly unreasonable to have any passion as an exception.

All passions first present in the mind of one person.

• Afterwards they appear in the mind of another.

The manner of their appearance is first as an idea, then as an impression.

This is the same in every case.

Thus, the transition must arise from the same principle.

This method of reasoning would be certain in natural philosophy or common life.

Pity depends, in a great measure, on the contiguity and even sight of the object.

This is a proof that it is derived from the imagination.

Women and children are most guided by the imagination.

Thus, they are most subject to pity.

This infirmity makes them:

• faint at the sight of a naked sword, though in the hands of their best friend
• pity those they find in any grief or affliction greatly.

Some philosophers derive pity from some unknown reflections on:

• the instability of fortune
• our being liable to the same miseries we see.

They will find this easy observation, and many others, contrary to them.

Regarding pity, it is remarkable that the communicated sympathy:

• sometimes acquires strength from the weakness of its original sympathy
• even arises by a transition from non-existent affections.

When a person obtains any honourable office, or inherits a great fortune, we always are happier for his prosperity:

• the less sense he seems to have of it
• the greater equanimity and indifference he shows in its enjoyment.

Similarly, we more lament a man who is not dejected by misfortunes by his patience.

Our compassion increases if his patience utterly removes all his sense of uneasiness.

When a person of merit falls into a great misfortune, we form a notion of his condition.

We carry our fancy from the cause to the usual effect.

We first conceive a lively idea of his sorrow.

We then feel an impression of it.

His mind’s greatness which elevates him above such emotions.

We:

• entirely overlook this, or
• only consider it to increase our admiration, love and tenderness for him.

We find from experience that such a degree of passion is usually connected with such a misfortune.

Though this is an exception in the present case, the imagination is affected by the general rule.

It makes us:

• conceive a lively idea of the passion, or
• rather feel the passion itself in the same way as if the person were really actuated by it.

This is why we blush for people who behave foolishly before us, though they:

• show no sense of shame
• do not seem conscious of their folly.

All this proceeds from a partial kind of sympathy.

It views its objects only on one side, without considering the other, which has a contrary effect, and would entirely destroy that emotion from the first appearance.

There are instances when an indifference and insensibility under misfortune increases our concern for the unfortunate, even if the indifference does not proceed from virtue and magnanimity.

Persons killed in their sleep is aggravated murder.

Historians observe that any infant prince, killed in this way by his enemies, is worthier of compassion the less sensible he is of his miserable condition.

Here, we are acquainted with the person’s wretched situation.

• It gives us a lively idea and sensation of sorrow attending it.
• This idea becomes more lively.
• The sensation becomes more violent by a contrast with that security and indifference, which we observe in the person himself.

A contrast of any kind never fails to affect the imagination, especially when:

• presented by the subject
• that pity depends entirely on the imagination.