| SECT. VII OF COMPASSION |
| But though the desire of the happiness or misery of others, according to the love or hatred we bear them, be an arbitrary and original instinct implanted in our nature, we find it may be counterfeited on many occasions, and may arise from secondary principles. |
| Pity is a concern for, and malice a joy in the misery of others, without any friendship or enmity to occasion this concern or joy. |
| We pity even strangers, and such as are perfectly indifferent to us: And if our ill-will to another proceed from any harm or injury, it is not, properly speaking, malice, but revenge. |
| But if we examine these affections of pity and malice we shall find them to be secondary ones, arising from original affections, which are varied by some particular turn of thought and imagination. |
| It will be easy to explain the passion of pity, from the precedent reasoning concerning sympathy. |
| We have a lively idea of every thing related to us. |
| All human creatures are related to us by resemblance. |
| Their persons, therefore, their interests, their passions, their pains and pleasures must strike upon us in a lively manner, and produce an emotion similar to the original one; since a lively idea is easily converted into an impression. |
| If this be true in general, it must be more so of affliction and sorrow. |
| These have always a stronger and more lasting influence than any pleasure or enjoyment. |
| A spectator of a tragedy passes through a long train of grief, terror, indignation, and other affections, which the poet represents in the persons he introduces. |
| As many tragedies end happily, and no excellent one can be composed without some reverses of fortune, the spectator must sympathize with all these changes, and receive the fictitious joy as well as every other passion. |
| Unless, therefore, it be asserted, that every distinct passion is communicated by a distinct original quality, and is not derived from the general principle of sympathy above-explained, it must be allowed, that all of them arise from that principle. |
| To except any one in particular must appear highly unreasonable. |
| As they are all first present in the mind of one person, and afterwards appear in the mind of another; and as the manner of their appearance, first as an idea, then as an impression, is in every case the same, the transition must arise from the same principle. |
| I am at least sure, that this method of reasoning would be considered as certain, either in natural philosophy or common life. |
| Add to this, that pity depends, in a great measure, on the contiguity, and even sight of the object; which is a proof, that it is derived from the imagination. |
| Not to mention that women and children are most subject to pity, as being most guided by that faculty. |
| The same infirmity, which makes them faint at the sight of a naked sword, though in the hands of their best friend, makes them pity extremely those, whom they find in any grief or affliction. |
| Those philosophers, who derive this passion from I know not what subtile reflections on the instability of fortune, and our being liable to the same miseries we behold, will find this observation contrary to them among a great many others, which it were easy to produce. |