The Theory of Moral Sentiments

f Sympathy.

How selfish soever man may be supposed,

there are evidently some principles in his nature,

which interest him in the fortune of others, and render

their happiness necessary to him, though he derives

nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.

Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which

we feel for the misery of others, when we either see

it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.

That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of

others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any

2instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the

other original passions of human nature, is by no

means confined to the virtuous and humane, though

they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility.

The greatest ruffian, the most hardened

violator of the laws of society, 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 feel in the like situation. Though

our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves

are at our ease, our senses 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 sensations. 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 case.

It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those

of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination

we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive

ourselves enduring all the same torments, we

enter as it were into his body and become in some

measure him, and thence form some idea of his sensations

and even feel something 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 last to affect us, and we then tremble and

shudder at the thought of what he feels. For as to

be in pain or distress of any kind excites the most

excessive sorrow, so to conceive or to imagine that

we are in it, excites some degree of the same emotion,

3in proportion to the vivacity or dullness of the

conception.

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for

the misery of others, that it is by changing places in

fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive

or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated

by many obvious observations, if it

should not be thought sufficiently 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 our own leg or our own arm;

and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure,

and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob,

when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope,

naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies,

as they see him do, and as they feel that they

themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of

delicate fibres and a weak constitution of body,

complain that in looking on the sores and ulcers which

are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt

to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent

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 arises from conceiving

what they themselves would suffer, if they really

were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and

if that particular part in themselves was actually affected

in the same miserable manner. The very

force of this conception is sufficient, in their feeble

frames, to produce that itching or uneasy sensation

complained of. Men of the most robust make, observe

that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a

very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds

4from the same reason; that organ being in the

strongest man more delicate than any other part of

the body is in the weakest.

Neither is it those circumstances only, which

create pain or sorrow, that call forth our fellow-feeling.

Whatever is the passion which arises from any

object in the person principally concerned, an analogous

emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation,

in the breast of every attentive spectator.

Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy

or romance who interest us, is as sincere as our grief

for their distress, and our fellow-feeling with their

misery is not more real than that with their happiness.

We enter into their gratitude towards those faithful

friends who did not desert them in their difficulties;

and we heartily go along with their resentment against

those perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or

deceived them. In every passion of which the mind

of man is susceptible, the emotions of the by-stander

always correspond to what, by bringing the case

home to himself, he imagines, should be the sentiments

of the sufferer.

Pity and compassion are words appropriated to

signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others.

Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally

the same, may now, however, without much

impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling

with any passion whatever.

Upon some occasions sympathy may seem to

arise merely from the view of a certain emotion in

another person. The passions, upon some occasions,

may seem to be transfused from one man to another,

5instantaneously, and antecedent to any knowledge

of what excited them in the person principally concerned.

Grief and joy, for example, strongly expressed

in the look and gestures of any one, at once

affect the spectator with some degree of a like painful

or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to every

body that sees it, a chearful object; as a sorrowful

countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy

one.

This, however, does not hold universally, or with

regard to every passion. There are some passions of

which the expressions excite no sort of sympathy,

but before we are acquainted with what gave occasion

to them, serve rather to disgust and provoke us

against them. The furious behavior of an angry

man is more likely to exasperate 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 passions

which it excites. But we plainly see what is the situation

of those with whom he is angry, and to

what violence they may be exposed from so enraged

an adversary. We readily, therefore, sympathize

with their fear or resentment, and are immediately

disposed to take part against the man from whom

they appear to be in so much danger.

If the very appearances of grief and joy inspire us

with some 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 person in whom

we observe them: and in these passions this is sufficient

to have some little influence upon us. The

effects of grief and joy terminate in the person who

6feels those emotions, of which the expressions do

not, like those of resentment, suggest to us the idea

of any other person for whom we are concerned,

and whose interests are opposite to his. The general

idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some

concern for the person who has met with it, but the

general idea of provocation excites no sympathy

with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature,

it seems, teaches us to be more averse to enter

into this passion, and, till informed of its cause, to be

disposed rather to take part against it.

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 express nothing but the anguish of the

sufferer, create rather a curiosity to inquire into his

situation, along with some disposition to sympathize

with him, than any actual sympathy that is very sensible.

The first question which we ask is, What

has befallen you? Till this be answered, tho’ we

are uneasy both from the vague idea of his misfortune,

and still more from torturing ourselves with

conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling

is not very considerable.

Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from

the view of the passion, as from that of the situation

which excites it. We sometimes feel for another,

a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether

incapable; because when we put ourselves in his

case, that passion arises 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

7the impropriety of his own behavior; because we

cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves

should be covered, had we behaved in so absurd a

manner.

Of all the calamities to which the condition of

mortality exposes mankind, the loss of reason appears,

to those who have the least spark of humanity,

by far the most dreadful, and they behold that last

stage of human wretchedness with deeper commiseration

than any other. But the poor wretch, who

is in it, laughs and sings perhaps, and is altogether

insensible of his own misery. The anguish which

humanity feels, therefore, at the sight of such an

object, cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of

the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator

must arise altogether from the consideration of what

he himself would feel if he was reduced to the same

unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is impossible,

was at the same time able to regard it with his present

reason and judgment.

What are the pangs of a mother when she hears

the moanings of her infant that during the agony of

disease cannot express what it feels? In her idea of

what it suffers, she joins, to its real helplessness,

her own consciousness of that helplessness, and her

own terrors for the unknown consequences of its

disorder; and out of all these, forms, for her own

sorrow, the most complete image of misery and

distress. The infant, however, feels only the uneasiness

of the present instant, which can never be

great. With regard to the future it is perfectly secure,

and in its thoughtlessness and want of foresight

possesses an antidote against fear and anxiety,

8the great tormentors of the human breast, from

which reason and philosophy will in vain attempt

to defend it when it grows up to a

man.

We sympathize even with the dead, and overlooking

what is of real importance in their situation,

that awful futurity which awaits them, we are

chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike

our senses, but can have no influence upon their

happiness. It is miserable, we think, to be deprived

of the light of the sun; to be shut out from life

and conversation; 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, we can never

feel too much for those who have suffered so dreadful

a calamity. The tribute of our fellow-feeling

seems doubly due to them now, when they are in

danger of being forgot by every body; and, by

the vain honors which we pay to their memory,

we endeavor, for our own misery, artificially

to keep alive our melancholy remembrance

of their misfortune. That our sympathy

can afford them no consolation seems to be

an addition to their calamity; and to think that all

we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates

all other distress, the regret, the love, and the lamentations

of their friends, can yield no comfort to

them, serves only to exasperate our sense of their

misery. The happiness of the dead, however, most

assuredly, is affected by none of these circumstances;

nor is it the thought of these things which can ever

9disturb the profound security of their repose. The

idea of that dreary and endless melancholy, which

the fancy naturally ascribes to their condition, arises

altogether from our joining to the change which

has been produced upon them, our own consciousness

of that change, from our putting ourselves in

their situation, and from our lodging, if I may be

allowed to say so, our own living souls in their inanimated

bodies, and thence conceiving what would

be our emotions in this case. It is from this very

illusion of the imagination, that the foresight of our

own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea

of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give

us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable

while we are alive. And from thence arises 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 injustice of mankind,

which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual,

guards and protects the society.