CHAP. III. That where there is no approbation of the conduct of the person who confers the benefit, there is little fympathy with the gratitude of him who receives it: and that, on the contrary, where there is no difap- probation of the motives of the perfon who does the mifchief, there is no fort of fympathy with the Of the Foundation of our Judgments concerning our own Sentiments and Conduct, and of the CHAP. I. Of the Principle of Self-approbation and of Self-difupprobation. CHAP. II. Of the love of Praife, and of that of CHAP. III. Of the Influence and Authority of Con- CHAP. IV. Of the Nature of Self-deceit, and of the Origin and Use of general Rules. CHAP. V. Of the influence and authority of the ge- neral Rules of Morality, and that they are juftly regarded as the Laws of the Deity. CHAP. VI. In what cafes the Senfe of Duty ought to Of the EFFECT of UTILITY upon the Sentiment CHAP. I. Of the beauty which the appearance of UTILITY beflows upon all the productions of art, and of the extenfive influence of this fpecies of Beauty. 300 CHAP. II. Of the beauty which the appearance of Utility beflows upon the characters and actions of men; and how far the perception of this beauty may How felfish foever man may be fuppofed, there are evidently fome principles in his nature, which intereft him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary 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 we either fee it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively VOL. I. B 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 greatest 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 fuffers. 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 representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his cafe. It is the impreffions of our own fenfes only, not thofe of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his fituation, we conceive ourfelves enduring all the fame torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in fome meafure the fame person with 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 distress of any kind excites the most exceffive forrow, fo to conceive or to imagine that we are in it, excites fome degree of the same emotion, 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 see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back owr 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 twift and balance their own bodies, as they fee him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his fituation. Persons of delicate fibres and a weak conftitution of body complain, that in looking on the fores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the ftreets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneafy fenfation in the correspondent part of their own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the mifery of those wretches affects that particular part in themselves more than any other; because that horror arifes from conceiving what |