How to Make Society More Harmonious

³⁶ But the observer’s feelings will still fall short of what is felt by the sufferer.

Mankind is naturally sympathetic because we can never exactly conceive the feelings in the sufferer.

Sympathy is done through that imaginary, but momentary, change of situation.

We always think:

• of our own safety, and
• that we ourselves are not the real sufferers.

These thoughts hinder us from having exactly the same feelings. The observee knows this and so he desires the relief from a more complete sympathy.

He can only hope to obtain this by lowering his feelings to the level allowed by the observers.

• He must flatten the sharpness of its natural tone, in order harmonize it with the emotions of the observers.

What they feel will always be different from what he feels.

Compassion can never be exactly the same with original sorrow because of the secret awareness that the conceived suffering is:

• only imaginary,
• lower in degree, and
• quite different.

The imagination of observer and the voluntary reduction of observee’s passion, may correspond with one another.

• This correspondence is enough for the harmony of society.

Though they will never be unisons, they may be concords. This is all that is required.

How to Make Society More Harmonious

³⁷ To produce this concord, nature teaches:

• the observers to assume the circumstances of the observee
• the observee to assume the circumstances of the observers

The observers are continually placing themselves in the observee’s situation in order to conceive similar emotions.

• Through sympathy, they are constantly considering what they themselves would feel if they were the sufferers.

The observee is also constantly placing himself in the observers’ situation.

• Through sympathy, he is also constantly led to imagine how he would be affected if he was his own observer. [i.e. self-conscious]

• This creates in him a reflected passion
• This is much weaker than his own original passion.
• It abates the violence of his own pasion.
• He begins to view his own situation in this candid and impartial light.

Friendship

³⁸ Friends restore the mind to some degree of tranquility and sedateness.

Our breast is calmed when our friends come.

We immediately remember how they will view our situation.

The effect of sympathy is instantaneous.

We expect less sympathy from a common acquaintance than from a friend.

• We cannot tell to an acquaintance everything that we can tell our friends.

• We fix our thoughts on our general situation which he is willing to consider.
• We compose ourselves more in the presence of a mere acquaintance than that of our friend.

We expect still less sympathy from strangers.

• We always bring down our passion to what strangers are expected to go along with.
• We compose ourselves still more in the presence of strangers than that of an acquaintance.

³⁹ Therefore, society and conversation are:

• the most powerful remedies bringing peace to the, and
• the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper necessary for self-satisfaction.

Speculators and retired men who sit brooding at home over grief or resentment seldom possess that equality of temper which is so common among men of the world.