216. T

SECT. X.

Of Sympathy.

THERE is in our nature a tendency to participate in the pains and pleasures of others; fo that their good is in fome degree our good, and their evil our evil: the natural effect of which is, to unite men more closely to one another, by prompting them, even for their own fake, to relieve distress and promote happiness. This participation of the joys and forrows of others may be termed Sympathy or Fellow-feeling. Sympathy with distress is called Compaffion or Pity. Sympathy with the happiness of another has no particular name; but, when expreffed in words to the happy perfon, is termed Congratulation. Every good man knows, that it is natural for him to rejoice with them who rejoice, and to weep with those that weep..

217. Even for fome inanimate things we

have a fort of tenderness, which by a licentious figure of speech might be called fympathy. To lose a staff which we have long walked with, or fee in ruins a house where we had long lived happily, would give a flight concern, though the lofs to us were a trifle, or nothing at all. We feel fomething like pity for the dead bodies of our friends, arifing from the confideration of their being laid in the folitary grave, a prey to worms and reptiles; and yet we are fure that from that circumftance the dead can never fuffer any thing. Towards the brute creation, who have feeling as well as we, though not in the fame degree or kind, our fympathy is more rational, and indeed ought to be strong: "A righteous man regardeth the life," and is not infenfible to the happiness, "of his beaft."

218. But our fympathy operates most powerfully towards our fellow-men; and, other circumstances being equal, is for the most part more or lefs powerful, according as they are more nearly, or more remotely, connected with us by kindred, by friendfhip, or by condition. With a friend, with

a

a relation, or with a perfon of our own condition, we are more apt to fympathise, than with people of different circumstances or connections. If we were to be tried for our life, we should wish to have a jury of. our equals. He who has had the toothach or the gout, is more inclined to pity those who fuffer from the fame diftempers, than that perfon is who never felt them.

219. We fometimes fympathise with another perfon in a cafe in which that perfon has little feeling of either good or evil. We blush at the rudeness of another man in company, even when he himself does not know that he is rude. We tremble for a mafon standing on a high scaffold, though we have reason to believe he is in no danger, because cuftom has made it familiar to him. On these occafions, our fellowfeeling feems to arife, not from our opinion of what the other person suffers, but from our idea of what we ourselves fhould fuffer if we were in his fituation, with the fame habits and powers of reflection which we have at prefent.

220. Our fellow-feeling is never thoroughly

roughly roused, till we know fomething of the nature and cause of that happiness or mifery which is the occafion of it: for till this be known, we cannot fo eafily imagine ourfelves in the condition of the hap py or unhappy perfon. When we meet with one in diftrefs, where the caufe is not apparent, we are uneafy indeed, but the pain is not fo great, or at least not fo definite, as it comes to be when he has anfwered this question, What is the matter with you ? which is always the first queftion we ask on fuch occafions. And then our fympathy is in proportion to what we think he feels, or perhaps to what we may think it reasonable that he should feel.

221. Many of our paffions may be communicated or ftrengthened by fympathy. In a chearful company we become chearful, and melancholy in a fad one. The prefence of a multitude employed in devotion tends to make us devout; the timorous have acted valiantly in the fociety of the valiant; and the cowardice of a few has struck a panic into an army. In a historical or fabulous narrative, we sympa

thise with our favourite perfonages in those emotions of gratitude, joy, indignation, or forrow, which we fuppofe would naturally arife in them from the circumftances of their fortune. Paffions, however, that are unnatural, as envy, jealousy, avarice, malice, or unreasonably violent, as rage and revenge, we are not apt to fympathife with; we rather take part with the perfons who may feem to be in danger from them, because we can more eafily fuppose ourfelves in their condition.

222. Nor do we readily fympathife with paffions which we disapprove, or have not experienced. It is therefore a matter of prudence in poets, and other writers of fiction, to contrive fuch characters and incidents, as the greater part of their readers may be fuppofed to fympathife with, and be interested in. And it is their duty, to cherish, by means of fympathy, in those who read them, thofe affections only which invigorate the mind, and are favourable to virtue; as patriotifm, valour, benevolence, piety, and the conjugal, parental, and filial charities. Scenes of exquifite distress, too

long