I.

PART felves, nor conceive any thing like the paffions which it excites. But we plainly fee what is the fituation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be éxpofed from fo enraged'an adverfary. 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 fuggeft to us the general idea of fome good or bad fortune that has befallen the perfon in whom we obferve them and in thefe paffions this is fufficient to have fome little influence upon us. The effects of grief and joy terminate in the perfon who feels thofe emotions, of which the expreffions do not, like those of refentment, fuggeft to us the idea of any other perfon for whom we are concerned, and whose interefts are oppofite to his. The general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates fome concern for the perfon who has met with it, but the general idea of provocation excites no fympathy with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature, it seems, teaches us to be more averfe to enter into this paffion, and, till informed of its caufe, to be disposed rather to take part against it.

Even our fympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are informed of the caufe of either, is always extremely imperfect. General lamentations, which exprefs nothing but the

anguish

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anguish of the fufferer, create rather a curiofity SEC. T. to inquire into his fituation, along with fome difpofition to fympathize with him, than any actual fympathy that is very fenfible. The first queftion which we afk is, What has befallen you? Till this be answered, though we are uneafy both from the vague idea of his misfortune, and ftill more from torturing ourselves with conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not very confiderable.

Sympathy, therefore, does not arife fo 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 feems to be altogether incapable; because, when we put ourselves in his cafe, that paffion arifes 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 confufion we ourfelves fhould be covered, had we behaved in fo abfurd a manner.

Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality expofes mankind, the lofs of reafon appears, to those who have the least spark of humanity, by far the moft dreadful, and they behold that last stage of human wretchedness, with deeper commiferation than any other. But the poor wretch, who is in it, laughs and fings perhaps, and is altogether infenfible of his own mifery. The anguifh which humanity feels,

PART therefore, at the fight of fuch an object cannot

I.

be the reflection of any fentiment of the fufferer. The compaffion of the fpectator muft arife altogether from the confideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the fame unhappy fituation, and, what perhaps is impoffible, was at the fame time able to regard it with his prefent reafon and judgment.

What are the pangs of a mother, when the hears the moanings of her infant that during the agony of disease cannot exprefs what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, fhe joins, to its real helpleffnefs, her own confcioufnefs of that helpleffnefs, and her own terrors for the unknown confequences of its diforder; and out of all thefe, forms, for her own forrow, the most complete image of mifery and diftrefs. The infant, however, feels only the uneafinefs of the present instant, which can never be great. With regard to the future, it is perfectly fecure, and in its thoughtleffnefs and want of forefight, poffeffes an antidote against fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breaft, from which, reafon and philofophy will, in vain, attempt to defend it when it grows up to a

man.

We fympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of real importance in their fituation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by thofe circumstances which strike our fenfes, but can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miferable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the fun; to be

fhut

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fhut out from life and converfation; to be laid S E C T. 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 almoft from the memory, of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have fuffered fo dreadful a calamity. The tribute of our fellow-feeling feems 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 mifery, artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their misfortune. That our fympathy can afford them no confolation feems to be an addition to their calamity; and to think that all we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other diftrefs, the regret, the love, and the lamentations of their friends, can yield no comfort to them, ferves only to exafperate our fense of their mifery. The happiness of the dead, however, moft affuredly, is affected by none of thefe circumstances; nor is it the thought of these things which can ever difturb the profound fecurity of their repofe. The idea of that dreary and endless melancholy, which the fancy naturally afcribes to their condition, arifes altogether from our joining to the change which has been produced upon them, our own confcioufnefs of that change, from our putting ourfelves in their fituation, and from our lodg ing, if I may be allowed to fay fo, our own liv

I.

PART ing fouls in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this cafe. It is from this very illufion of the imagination, that the forefight of our own diffolution is fo terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miferable while we are alive. And from thence arifes 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 injuftice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the fociety,

CHAP. II.

Of the Pleasure of mutual Sympathy.

BUT whatever may be the cause of fympathy, or however it may be excited, nothing pleases us more than to obferve in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breaft; nor are we ever fo much fhocked as by the appearance of the contrary. Those who are fond of deducing all our fentiments from certain refinements of felf-love, think themselves at no lofs to account, according to their own principles, both for this pleasure and this pain. Man, fay they, conscious of his own weakness,

and