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felfish foever man may be fuppof

Hed, there are evidently fome principles

in his nature, which intereft him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness neceffary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of feeing it. Of this kind is pity or compaffion, the emotion which we feel for the mifery of others, when

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when we either fee it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive forrow from the forrow of others is a matter of fact too obvious to require any inftances 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 exquifite 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 fhould feel 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 person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his fenfations. 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 emotion, in proportion to the vivacity or dulness 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 see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, 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 fufferer. 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 must 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 uneasy sensation in the correfpondent part of their own bodies. The horror which they

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conceive at the mifery of those wretches affects that particular part in themfelves more than any other; because that horror arifes from conceiving 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 fenfation. complained of. Men of the most robuft make, obferve that in looking upon fore eyes they often feel a very fenfible forenefs in their own, which proceeds from the fame reason; that organ being in the ftrongest man more delicate than any other part of the body is in the weakest.

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 spectator. Our joy for the deliverance of thofe heroes of tragedy or romance who intereft us, is as fincere as our grief for their diftrefs, and our fellowfeeling with their mifery is not more real than that with their happiness. We enter into their gratitude towards thofe faithful friends who did not defert them in their difficulties ; and we heartily go along with their refentment against thofe perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. In every

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paffion of which the mind of man is fufceptible, the emotions of the by-ftander always correfpond to what, by bringing the cafe home to himself, he imagines, fhould be the fentiments 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 fellow-felling with any paffion whatever.

Upon fome occafions fympathy may feem to arife meerly from the view of a certain emotion in another perfon. The paffions, upon fome occafions, may feem to be transfufed from one man to another, inftantaneously, 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 fpectator with fome degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion.

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fmiling face is, to every body that fees it, a chearful object; as as a forrowful countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one.

This, however, does not hold univerfally, 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 against B 3 himfelf

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