important trust than our power of promoting the happiness of those already comfortable, the former stood more in need of a guard to check its excesses than the latter of a stimulus to animate its exertions. But further, as it is more in our power to communicate misery than happiness, so it is more in our power to relieve misery than to superadd enjoyment. Hence an additional reason for implanting in our constitution the affection of compasssion, while there is none analogous to it urging us by an instinctive impulse to acts of general benevolence."

The final causes of compassion, then, are to prevent and to relieve misery-to prevent misery by checking the violence of our own angry passions, and to relieve misery by calling our attention, and engaging our good offices, to every object of distress within our reach. The latter is the more common and the more important of its offices, at least in the present state of society. And it is this which I have chiefly in view in the following observations.

I have said that compassion calls or arrests our attention to the distressed objects within our reach. When we are immersed in the business of the world, or intoxicated with its pleasures, we are apt to overlook, and sometimes to withdraw from scenes of misery. It is the office of compassion to plead the cause of the wretched, or rather to solicit us to take their case under our consideration; for so strong is the sense which all men have of the duty of beneficence, that, if they could only be brought to exercise their powers of reflection on the facts before them, they could scarcely ever fail to relieve distress, when, in consistency with other obligations, it was in their power to do so. One striking proof of this is, that the active zeal of humanity is (cæteris paribus) strongest in those men whose warm imaginations present to them lively pictures of the sufferings of others; and that there is scarcely any man, however callous and selfish, whose beneficence may not be called forth by a skilful and eloquent description of any scene of misery. General considerations with regard to our social duties will often have little weight;

but if the attention can only be fixed to facts, nature, in most instances, accomplishes the rest. Hence the importance in our constitution of the affection of compassion, which, amidst the tumult of business or of pleasure, stops us suddenly in our career, and reminds us that we have social duties to fulfil ;-calls upon us to examine the claims of the helpless, and aggravates our guilt if we disregard its admonition.

Compassion, according to the view now given of it, is an instinctive impulse prompting to a particular object, analogous in many respects to the animal appetites already considered. It is, indeed, one of the most amiable, and one of the most important parts of our constitution; but it is not an object of moral approbation. Our duty lies in the proper regulation of it-in considering with attention the facts it recommends to our notice, and in acting with respect to them as reason and conscience prescribe. It is hardly necessary for me to add, that there are cases in which these inform us that we ought not to follow the impulse of compassion, and in which it is no less meritorious in us to resist its solicitations, than to deny ourselves the unlawful gratification of a sensual appetite; and even in those instances in which our duty calls us to obey its impulse, our merit does not arise from the affection we feel, but from doing what our conscience approves of as right on a deliberate consideration of the action we are to perform, when examined in all its bearings and consequences.

Notwithstanding, however, the unquestionable truth of this theoretical conclusion, it is nevertheless certain, that a strong and habitual tendency to indulge this affection affords no slight presumption in favor of the worth and benevolence of a character. Whoever reflects, on the one hand, upon its general coincidence with what a sense of duty prescribes; and upon the other, on the nature of those circumstances by which its indulgence is checked and discouraged among men of the world, will, I apprehend, readily assent to the truth of this observation. The poet, perhaps, went a little too far when he stated as a general and unqualified maxim, ̓Αγαθοὶ ἀριδάκρυες ἄνδρες ; * but, upon the

*"Good men are prone to shed tears."-"The poets," says Mr. Wollaston, "who

whole, I am inclined to think that this maxim, with all the exceptions which may contradict it, will be found much nearer to the fact than they who have been trained in the schools of fashionable persiflage will be disposed to acknowledge.

The philosophers who attempt to resolve the whole of human conduct into self-love, have adopted various theories to explain the affection of pity. Without stopping to examine these, I shall confine myself to a simple statement of the fact, which statement will at once show how far all these are erroneous, and will point out the oversight in which they have originated. Whoever reflects carefully on the effect produced on his own mind by objects which excite his pity must be sensible that it is a compounded one; and, therefore, unless we are at pains to analyze it carefully, we may be apt to mistake some one of the ingredients for the whole combination.

On the sight of distress we are distinctly conscious, I think, of three things: 1. A painful emotion in consequence of the distress we see. 2. A selfish desire to remove the cause of this uneasiness. 3. A disposition to relieve the distress from a benevolent and disinterested concern about the sufferer. If we had not this last disposition, and if it were not stronger than the former, the sight of a distressed object would invariably prompt us to fly from it, as we frequently see those men do in whom the second ingredient prevails over the third. In ordinary cases the impulse of pity attaches us to the cause of our sufferings; and we cling

of all writers undertake to imitate nature most, oft introduce even their heroes weeping."-(See how Homer represents Ulysses. Od. E. 151, 152, 157, 158.) "The tears of men," the same author finely adds, "are in truth very different from the cries and ejulations of children. They are silent streams, and flow from other causes, commonly some tender, or perhaps philosophical reflection. It is easy to see how hard hearts and dry eyes come to be fashionable. But for all that it is cerain the glandula lachrymales were not made for nothing.”—(Religion of Nature Delineated, p. 258. 8th Edition.)

It is remarked by Descartes, that the tears of children and of old men (in which both are apt to indulge) flow from different sources. "Senes sæpe lachrymantur ex amore et gaudio. Infantes raro ex lætitiâ lachrymantur, sæpius ex tristitiâ, etiam quam amor non comitatur."-(De Passionibus, Secunda Pars, Articulus 133.) The important facts here described have seldom been remarked; and the statement of them does honor to Descartes as an attentive and accurate observer of human nature in the beginning and towards the close of its history.

to it, even although we are conscious that we can afford no relief but the consolation of sympathy;-a demonstrative proof that one at least of the ingredients of pity (and in most men the prevailing ingredient) is purely disinterested in its nature and origin.

Although, however, this observation seems to me decisive against the theory in question, in whatever form it may be proposed, I cannot omit this opportunity of examining a new modification of the same hypothesis, which occurs in Mr. Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. The view of the subject which he has taken has the merit of entire originality, and, like all his other speculations and opinions, derives a strong recommendation from the splendid abilities and exemplary worth of the author. I hope therefore, that the critical strictures upon it which I am now to offer will not be considered as a useless or unreasonable interruption of the discussions in which we are at present engaged.

Before entering on this argument, I shall just mention another hypothesis concerning the origin of compassion, which seems to me to approach more nearly to that of Mr. Smith than any thing else I have met with in the works of his predecessors. I allude to the account of Pity given by Hobbes, who defines it to be "the imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity."* In what respect this theory coincides with Mr. Smith's, will appear from the remarks I am now to make. In the mean time I shall only observe how completely the futility of Hobbes's definition is exposed by a single remark of Butler. 66 That, if it were just, it would follow that the most fearful temper would be the most compassionate." We may add too, that our pity is more strongly excited by the distresses of an infant than by those of the aged, although the former are such as we

* Descartes has adopted this theory of Hobbes. "Illi, qui se valde debiles sentiunt et obnoxios adversæ fortunæ, videntur aliis propensiores ad misericordiam, quia sibi repræsentant alienum malum ceu quod sibi quoque queat evenire, et sic ad misericordiam moventur magis ex amore sui quam aliorum."-De Passionibus, Tertia Pars, Articulus clxxxvi.

See an excellent note on Sermon V. It contains an important hint about sympathy, which Mr. Smith has prosecuted with great ingenuity.

cannot possibly be exposed to suffer a second time, and the latter such as we must expect to endure sooner or later, if the period of life should be prolonged to that term, which the weakness of most individuals disposes them to wish for.

The leading principles of Mr. Smith's theory, in as far as it applies to pity or compassion, are comprehended in the three following propositions. 1. That it is from our own experience alone we can form any idea of the sufferings of another person on any particular occasion.

2. That the only manner in which we can form this idea is by supposing ourselves in the same circumstances with him, and then conceiving how we should be affected if we were so situated.

3. That the uneasiness which we feel in consequence of the sufferings of another arises from our conceiving those sufferings to be our own.

The first of these propositions is unquestionable. Our notions of pain and of suffering are undoubtedly derived in the first instance, from our own experience.

The second proposition is perhaps expressed with too great a degree of latitude. That in order to understand completely the sufferings of our neighbours in any particular instance, it is necessary for us to have been once placed in circumstances somewhat similar to his, I believe to be true, and there can be no doubt that it is frequently useful to us to collect our attention to the distresses of others, by conceiving their situation to be ours; but it does not appear to me that this process of the mind takes place in every case in which we are affected by the sight of misery. When we are once satisfied that a particular situation is a natural source of misery to the person placed in it, the bare perception of the situation is sufficient to excite an unpleasant emotion in the spectator, without any reference whatever to himself. This is easily explicable on the common doctrine of the association of ideas.

Nor is this all. The looks, the gestures, the tones of distress, speak in a moment from heart to heart, and affect us with an anguish more exquisitely piercing than any we are able to produce by all the various expedi