they themselves would fuffer, if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and if that particular part in themfelves 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 uneafy fenfation complained of. Men of the most robust make, obferve that in looking upon fore eyes they often feel a very fenfible foreness in their own, which proceeds from the fame reafon; that organ being in the ftrongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.

Neither is it those circumftances only, which create pain or forrow, that call forth our fellowfeeling. 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 thofe heroes of tragedy or romance who intereft us, is as fincere as our grief for their diftrefs, and our fellowfeeling with their misery 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 paffion of which the mind of man is susceptible, the emotions of the by-ftander always correspond 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-feeling with any paffion whatever.

Upon fome occafions fympathy may seem to arise merely from the view of a certain emotion in another perfon. The paflions, upon fome occafions, may feem to be transfused 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. A fmiling face is, to every body that fees it, a cheerful object, 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 some paffions of which the expreffions excite no fort of fympathy, but before we are acquainted with what gave occafion to them, ferve rather to disgust and provoke us against them. The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exafperate us against himself 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 see what is the fituation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be

expofed from so 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 some 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 these 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 resentment, suggeft to us the idea of any other person for whom we are concerned, and whose interests 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 feems, teaches us to be more averse to enter into this paffion, and, till informed of its cause, to be difpofed rather to take part against it.

Even our fympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are informed of the cause of either, is always extremely imperfect. General lamentations, which express nothing but the anguish of the sufferer, create rather a curiofity to inquire into his fituation, along with some dispofition to fympathize with him, than any actual sympathy that is very fenfible. The first question

which we ask 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 case, that paffion arises in our breast from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality. We blufh 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 ourselves fhould be covered, had we behaved in fo abfurd a manner.

Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality exposes mankind, the lofs of reafon appears, to those who have the leaft fpark 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 anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the fight of fuch an object, cannot be the reflection of any fentiment of the sufferer. The compaffion of the spectator must arise 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 present reason and judgment.

What are the pangs of a mother, when the hears the moanings of her infant that during the agony of disease cannot express what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, fhe joins, to its real helplessness, her own consciousness of that helpleffness, and her own terrors for the unknown confequences of its diforder; and out of all these, forms, for her own forrow, the most complete image of mifery and diftrefs. The infant, however, feels only the uncafinefs of the present inftant, which can never he great. With regard to the future, it is perfectly fecure, and in its thoughtlessness and want of forefight, poffeffes an antidote against fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breaft, from which, reason and philosophy 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 circumftances which ftrike 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 out from life and converfation; to be laid 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 almost from the memory, of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine,