Sympathy

Compassion

¹ However selfish man may be, his nature has pity or compassion which:

• interest him in the fortune of others, and
• render the happiness of others necessary to him

Pity or compassion is our feeling for the misery of others.

We often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others.

• The virtuous and humane feel it most sensibly.
• The greatest criminal has it too.

² We do not immediately know what other men feel.

We only have an idea of how they are affected.

• We get this idea by thinking how we ourselves would feel in the same situation.

If our brother is on the rack, we will never feel his pains exactly. We can only imagine his pain.

Our imagination copies only the impressions that we get from our own senses.

By imagination, we:

• place ourselves in his situation
• see ourselves enduring the same torments

Our Bodies Recreate The Human Phenomena We Perceive That Impacts Us

³ This is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others.

We are affected by what he feels by changing places with the sufferer, in imagination.

• When we see a stroke aimed on the leg of another person, we naturally draw back our own leg.
  • When it falls, we feel hurt by it.
• When a crowd gazes at a dancer on the slack rope, they naturally writhe and twist their own bodies, as they see him do.
  • They feel that they themselves must do if they were in his situation.

Sensitive people feel uneasy when looking at the beggar’s sores.

• They feel his misery which then affects their own bodies.

That feeling comes from conceiving what they themselves would suffer if:

• they really were that beggar, and
• their body actually had those sores

The force of this conception produces that itching or uneasy sensation in their feeble frames.

Strong men feel soreness in their own eyes in looking on the sore eyes of others.

• It comes from the same reason – the eyes are more delicate in the strongest man.

The Correspondence of Feelings: Sympathy

⁴ Painful or sad events are not the only ones that call forth our fellow-feeling.

A feeling springs up in us that is analogous to whatever feeling arises in the observed person.*

We are sincerely:

• happy for the success of heroes
• sad for their distress

Our fellow-feeling with their misery is as real as our fellow-feeling with their happiness.

In every emotion, the bystander’s feelings always correspond to what he imagines would be the sufferer’s feelings.

⁵ Pity and compassion signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others.

The meaning of sympathy was perhaps originally the same with pity.

• It may now denote our fellow-feeling with any passion.