| When we observe a person in misfortunes, we are affected with pity and love; but the author of that misfortune becomes the object of our strongest hatred, and is the more detested in proportion to the degree of our compassion. |
| Now for what reason should the same passion of pity produce love to the person, who suffers the misfortune, and hatred to the person, who causes it; unless it be because in the latter case the author bears a relation only to the misfortune; whereas in considering the sufferer we carry our view on every side, and wish for his prosperity, as well as are sensible of his affliction? |
| I. shall just observe, before I leave the present subject, that this phaenomenon of the double sympathy, and its tendency to cause love, may contribute to the production of the kindness, which we naturally bear our relations and acquaintance. |
| Custom and relation make us enter deeply into the sentiments of others; and whatever fortune we suppose to attend them, is rendered present to us by the imagination, and operates as if originally our own. |
| We rejoice in their pleasures, and grieve for their sorrows, merely from the force of sympathy. |
| Nothing that concerns them is indifferent to us; and as this correspondence of sentiments is the natural attendant of love, it readily produces that affection. |
| SECT. X OF RESPECT AND CONTEMPT |
| There now remains only to explain the passion of respect and contempt, along with the amorous affection, in. |
| order to understand all the passions which have any mixture of love or hatred. |
| Let us begin with respect and contempt. |
| In considering the qualities and circumstances of others, we may either regard them as they really are in themselves; or may make a comparison betwixt them and our own qualities and circumstances; or may join these two methods of consideration. |
| The good qualities of others, from the first point of view, produce love; from the second, humility; and from the third, respect; which is a mixture of these two passions. |
| Their bad qualities, after the same manner, cause either hatred, or pride, or contempt, according to the light in which we survey them. |
| That there is a mixture of pride in contempt, and of humility in respect, is, I think, too evident, from their very feeling or appearance, to require any particular proof. |
| That this mixture arises from a tacit comparison of the person contemned or respected with ourselves is no less evident. |
| The same man may cause either respect, love, or contempt by his condition and talents, according as the person, who considers him, from his inferior becomes his equal or superior. |
| In changing the point of view, though the object may remain the same, its proportion to ourselves entirely alters; which is the cause of an alteration in the passions. |
| These passions, therefore, arise from our observing the proportion; that is, from a comparison. |
| I have already observed, that the mind has a much stronger propensity to pride than to humility, and have endeavoured, from the principles of human nature, to assign a cause for this phaenomenon. |
| Whether my reasoning be received or not, the phaenomenon is undisputed, and appears in many instances. |
| Among the rest, it is the reason why there is a much greater mixture of pride in contempt, than of humility in respect, and why we are more elevated with the view of one below us, than mortifyed with the presence of one above us. |