instances to prove it; for this fentiment, like all the other original paffions of human nature, is by 'no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite fenfibility. The greateft ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of fociety, 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 fell in the like fituation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our fenfes will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own perfon, 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 reprefenting to us what would be our own, if we were in his cafe. It is the impreffions of our own fenfes only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his fituation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the fame torments, we enter as it were into his body and become in fome measure him, and thence form fome idea of his fenfations and even feel fomething 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 laft to affect us, and we then tremble and fhudder at the thought of what he feels. For as to be in pain or diftrefs of any kind excites the most exceffive forrow, fo to conceive or to imagine that we are in it, excites fome degree of the fame emo tion, tion, in proportion to the vivacity or dulnefs of the conception. That this is the fource of our fellow-feeling for the mifery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the fufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonftrated by many obvious obfervations, if it fhould not be thought fufficiently evident of itself. When we fee a ftroke aimed and juft ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another perfon, we naturally fhrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in fome measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the flack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they fee him do, and as they feel that they themselves muft do if in his fituation. Perfons of delicate fibres and a weak conftitution of body, complain that in looking on the fores and ulcers which are expofed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneafy fenfation in the correfpondent 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 arifes from conceiv-ing what they themselves would fuffer, if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and if that particular part in themselves was actually affected in the fame miferable manner. The very force of this conception is fufficient, in their feeble frames, to produce that itching or uneasy sensation complained of. Men of the most robuft make, observe that in looking upon fore eyes they often feel a very fenfible foreness in their own, which proceeds from the fame reason; that organ being in the strongest man more delicate than any other part the body is in the weakest. of Neither is it thofe circumftances only, which create pain or forrow, that call forth our fellow-feeling. Whatever is the paffion which arifes from any object in the perfon principally concerned, an analogous emotion fprings up, at the thought of his fituation, in the breaft of every attentive fpectator. Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who interest us, is as fincere as our grief for their distress, and our fellow-feeling with their mifery is not more real than that with their happiness. We enter into their gratitude towards those faithful friends who did not defert them in their difficulties; and we heartily go along with their refentment against those perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. In every paffion of which the mind of man is fufceptible, the emotions of the by-stander always correfpond to what, by bringing the cafe home to himself, he imagines, fhould be the fenti ments of the sufferer. Pity and compaffion are words appropriated to fignify our fellow-feeling with the forrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the fame, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made ufe of to denote our fellowfeeling with any paffion whatever. Upon fome occafions fympathy may feem to arife merely from the view of a certain emotion in another perfon. The paffions, upon fome occasions, may seem to be transfufed from one man to another, instantaneously, instantaneously, and antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the perfon principally concerned. Grief and joy, for example, ftrongly expreffed in the look and geftures of any one, at once affect the spectator with fome degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to every body that fees it, a chearful object; as a forrowful countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one. This, however, does not hold universally, or with regard to every paffion. There are fome paffions of which the expreffions excite no fort of fympathy, but before we are acquainted with what gave occafion to them, ferve rather to difguft and provoke us against them. The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exafperate us againft himfelf 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 paffions which it excites. But we plainly fee what is the fituation of thofe with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be expofed from fo enraged an adversary. We readily, therefore, fympathize with their fear or refentment, and are immediately difpofed to take part against the man from whom they appear to be in fo much danger. If the very appearances of grief and joy inspire us with fome 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 perfon in whom we obferve them: and in these paffions this is fufficient to have fome little influence upon us. The, cíects of grief and joy terminate in the perfon who ! feels thofe emotions, of which the expreffions do 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 exprefs nothing but the anguish of the fufferer, create rather a curiofity to inquire into his fituation, along with fome difpofition to fympathize with him, than any actual fympathy that is very fenfible. The firft queftion which we ask is, What has befallen you? Till this be answered, tho' we are uneafy both from the vague idea of his misfortune, and still, more from torturing ourselves with conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellowfeeling is not very confiderable. Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the paffion, as from that of the fituation which excites it. We fometimes feel for another, a paffion of which he himself seems to be altogether incapable; because when we put ourselves in his cafe, that paffion arifes in our breaft 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 fenfe of the 4 |