susceptibility of this reflex motion in certain minds, by which, even when the laws of suggestion, and the consequent images which rise to the mind, are similar, the sympathy, as a subseqent emotion, is more or less vivid; since there is no particular law of suggestion, unless we form one for this particular case, the force of which, in any greater degree, seems to accompany, with equal and corresponding proportion, the more lively compassion; but our sympathies are stronger and weaker, with all possible varieties of suggestion, in every other respect. It would be vain, however, if there truly be such a peculiar susceptibility, to attempt any nicer inquiry, in the hope of discovering original elements, which are obviously beyond the power of our analysis, or of fixing the precise point, at which the influence of ordinary suggestion ceases, and the influence of what is peculiar in the tendency to sympathy, if there be any peculiar influence, begins.

One most important distinction, however, it is necessary to make, to save you from an error, into which the use of a single term for two successive feelings, and I may add, the general imperfect analysis of philosophers, might otherwise lead you.

What is commonly termed pity, or compassion, or sympa thy, even when the circumstances which merely lead to the sympathy, are deducted from the emotion itself, is not one simple state, but two successive states of mind, the feeling of the sorrow of others, and the desire of relieving it. The former of these is that which leads me to rank pity as an immediate emotion, the latter, which is a separate affection of the mind, subsequent to the other, and easily distinguished from it, we should rank, if it were to be consdered alone, with our other desires, which, in like manner, arise from some view of good to be attained, or of evil to be removed.

After this analysis of the emotion of pity into its constituent elements, a lively feeling participant of the sorrow of others, and the desire of relief to that of sorrow, a desire, which, in the same circumstances, may be greater or less, as the mind is more benevolent, it can scarcely fail to occur to you, that the first of these elements is, as mere grief, an emotion of the same species with the primary grief with which we are said to sympathize, or with any other grief which we are capable of feeling, a form, in short, of that general sadness which has been already considered by us. And, as a mere state or affection of the mind, considered without regard to the circumstances which produce it, or the circumstances which follow it, I confess, that there does not seem to me anything

peculiar in the grief itself, of pity, when separated, by such an analysis, from all thought of the primary sufferer, whose sorrow we feel to have been reflected on us, and from the consequent desire of affording him aid. But, though the elementary feeling itself may be similar, the circumstances in which it arises, and the circumstances which accompany it, when, without any direct cause of pain, we yet catch pain, as it were, by a sort of contagious sensibility, from the mere violence of another's anguish, are of so very peculiar a kind, that I have not hesitated to give to this susceptibility of sympathetic feeling a distinct place in our arrangement; for the same reason, as in our systems of physics, we refer to different physical powers, and, therefore, to different parts of our system, the same apparent motions of bodies, when these motions, though in themselves apparently the same which might be produced by other causes, are the results of causes that are in their own nature strikingly different. Pity, however complex the state of mind may be which it expresses, is one of the most interesting of all the states in which the mind can exist, and affords itself an example of the advantage of treating our emotions as complex rather than elementary, -an advantage which led me to form that particular arrangement of our emotions, in the order of which they have been submitted to your consideration,-when, if the mere elements had been all that were submitted to you, you would perhaps have been little able to distinguish in them the familiar complex states of mind, which alone you have been accustomed to distinguish as emotions.

Even that primary feeling of sympathy, which is a mere participation of the sufferings of another, it may perhaps be thought, is only a form of the affections of love before considered by us, since there can be no love without a participation of the sorrows and joys of the object beloved. But these sympathies are emotions arising from love, not the mere regard itself. We must not forget that the word love is often employed, very vaguely, to signify, not the mere affections of mind which constitute the vivid feelings of regard, but every affection of mind that has any reference to the object of this regard. We give the name of love in this way, to the whole successive states of mind of the lover, as if love were something diffused in them all; but this, though a convenient expression, is still a vague one; and the emotions are not the less different, in themselves, for being comprehended in a single word. The emotion of simpathy is still different from the simple feeling of affection, even when the object of our sympathy is truly the object of our love. It may have arisen

from it, indeed, but it is not the same, as that feeling of warm regard, from which, in such a case, it arose.

So different is the mere sympathy from simple love, that it takes place when there is no actual love whatever, but, on the contrary, positive dislike or abhorrence. Let us imagine not one atrocious crime only, but many crimes the most atrocious, to have been committed by an individual; and let us then suppose him streched upon the rack, every limb torn, and every fibre quivering. Let us imagine, that we hear the heavy fall of that instrument, by which bone after bone is slowly broken, dividing with dreadful intervals, the groans of the victim, that cease at the moment at which the new stroke is expected, and afterwards rise again instantly in more dreadful anguish, to cease only when another more agonizing stroke is again on the point of falling, or when the milder agony of death overwhelms at once the suffering and the sufferer. Does our hatred of the criminal save us even from the slightest uneasiness at what we see and hear? Do we feel no cold shuddering at the sound of the worse than deadly blow? no terror, increasing into agony at the moment when it pauses, as we expected it to fall again? It is enough for us that there is agony before our eyes. Without loving the sufferer,—for though the feelings that oppress us, may not allow us to think of his atrocities at the moment, they certainly do not invest him with any amiable qualities, except that of being miserable, -we feel for him what it is impossible for us not to feel for any living thing that is in equal anguish. We should feel this, -if the anguish be of a kind that forces itself upon our senses in all its dreadful reality,-though his crimes were whispered to us every moment; and when he lies mangled and groaning before us, if we were forced to inflict another stroke with our own hands, that was to break the last unbroken limb, or to receive the blow ourselves, it is not easy to say from which alternative we should shrink with a more frightful and sickly loathing.

In all this, nature has consulted well. If our sympathy had been made to depend on our moral approbation, it would rise in many cases too late to be of profit. We are men; and nothing which man can feel is foreign to us. The friend of the Self-tormentor in Terence's comedy, when he uttered these memorable words, which have been so often quoted, "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,"*-expressed only what the Author of our being has fixed, in some degree, in every heart, and which is as much a part of the mental con

Actus I. Sena i. v. 25.

stitution of the virtuous, as their powers of memory and rea

son.

If compassion were to arise only after we had ascertained. the moral character of the sufferer, and weighed all the consequences of good and evil which might result to society from the relief which it is in our power to offer, who would rush to the preservation of the drowning mariner, to the succour of the wounded, to the aid of him who calls for help against the ruffians who are assailing him? Our powers of giving assistance have been better accommodated to the necessities which may be relieved by them. By the principle of compassion within us, we are benefactors almost without willing it ;-we have already done the deed, when, if deliberation had been necessary as a previous step, we should not have proceeded far in the calculation which was to determine, by a due equipoise of opposite circumstances, the propriety of the relief.

Even in the case of our happier feelings, it is not a slight advantage, that Nature has made the sight of joy productive of joy to him who merely beholds it. Men are to mingle in society; and they bring into society affections of mind that are almost infinitely various, hopes and fears, joy and sadness, projects and passions, far more contrasted, than their mere external varieties of form and colour. If these internal diversities of feeling were to continue as they are, what delight could society afford? The opposition would render the company of each a burthen to the other. The gay would fly from the sullen gloom of the melancholy; the melancholy would shrink from a mirth which they could not partake, and which would throw them back upon their own sorrows with a deeper intensity of grief. Such is the confusion which society of itself would present. But the same Power, which formed this beautiful system of the universe out of chaos, reduces to equal regularity and beauty this and every other confusion of the moral world. By the mere principle of sympathy, all the discord in the social feelings becomes accordant. The sad unconsciously become gay; the gay are softened into a joy, that has less perhaps of mirth, but not less of delight; and though there is still a diversity of cheerfulness, all is cheerfulness, as in a concert of many instruments, in which, though we are still able to distinguish each instrument from the others, and though the simple tones of each may be various, there is still one universal harmony that seems to animate the whole, like the presence, and the voice of inspiration of the celestial power of Music herself.

But if the bounty of our Creator be shown, in the provision which he has made for diffusing to many the joy which is felt

by one, how much more admirable is the providence of his bounty, in that instant diffusion to others of the grief which is felt only by one, that makes the relief of this suffering not a duty merely, which we coldly perform, but a want which is almost like the necessity of some moral appetite! Every individual has thus the aid of all the powers of every other individual. When some wretch is found lying bleeding on the common street, all who see him run to his assistance, as if their own immediate ease depended on their speed. The aged, the infirm, mix in the mob, with an interest as eager as if they were able to join in the common aid; the very child stops as he passes, and cannot resume his sport, till he has followed, with the crowd, the half insensible object of so many cares to a place where surer relief may be procured. When, in a storm, some human being is seen, in the distant surf, clinging to a plank, that is sometimes driven nearer the shore and sometimes carried further off, sometimes buried in the surge and then rising again, as if itself struggling, like the half-hopeless wretch whom it supports, that looks sadly to the shore as he rises from every wave,-has nature abandoned the sufferer with aid? Is he to find no one who will make at least an effort to save a human being that is on the point of perishing? He is not so abandoned. Nature has provided a deliverance for him in the bosom of every spectator. There are courageous hearts and strong hands, that, in the very peril of an equal fate, will rush to his succour, and that in laying him in safety on that soil, which he despaired of treading again, will feel only the joy of having delivered a human being, whose name and whose very existence were unknown to them before.