Part I, Section I, Chapter I

Part I: Of the Propriety of Action. Consisting of three Sections.

Section I: Of the Sense of Propriety.

Of Sympathy.

However selfish we may suppose human beings to be, there are plainly principles in their nature that make them interested in the fortunes of others and make others’ happiness necessary to them, though they gain nothing from it but the pleasure of seeing it. Pity or compassion is such a principle: the emotion we feel for another’s misery when we see it, or when it is vividly brought before our minds. That the sorrow of others often makes us sorrowful is too obvious a fact to need examples. For this feeling, like every other original passion of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they may feel it with the keenest sensitivity. Even the greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of society’s laws, is not entirely without it.

Since we have no direct experience of what other people feel, we can form no idea of how they are affected except by imagining what we ourselves would feel in the same situation. Though our brother is on the rack, while we ourselves are at ease our senses will never tell us what he suffers. They have never carried us beyond our own person, and never can; only through imagination can we form any conception of his sensations. Nor can imagination help us except by representing what our sensations would be if we were in his place. It copies only the impressions of our own senses, not his. In imagination we put ourselves in his situation; we conceive ourselves enduring the same torments; we enter, as it were, his body and become, to some degree, him. In this way we form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something that, though weaker, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, once brought home to us and made our own, begin at last to affect us: we tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. Just as pain or distress of any kind arouses the deepest sorrow, imagining ourselves in it arouses some measure of that same emotion, according to the vividness or faintness of our conception.

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others—that by imaginatively changing places with the sufferer we come to conceive or feel what he feels—can be shown by many familiar observations, if it is not already clear enough. When we see a blow aimed at someone’s arm or leg and about to fall, we naturally recoil and draw back our own arm or leg; when it falls, we feel it in some measure and are hurt along with the sufferer. A crowd watching a dancer on a slack rope naturally twists, writhes, and balances its bodies as it sees him do, and as its members feel they would have to do in his situation. People with delicate nerves and frail constitutions complain that, when they look at the sores and ulcers displayed by beggars in the streets, they tend to feel an itch or discomfort in the corresponding part of their own bodies. Their horror at these unfortunate people’s misery affects that particular part more than any other because it springs from imagining what they themselves would suffer if they were the people before them and that very part of their own bodies were afflicted in the same wretched way. In their frail constitutions, the force of the idea alone is enough to produce the itch or discomfort of which they complain. Even men of the strongest build notice that looking at inflamed eyes often makes their own eyes distinctly sore, for the same reason: in the strongest man, that organ is more delicate than any other bodily part in the weakest.

Nor is our fellow-feeling called forth only by circumstances that cause pain or sorrow. Whatever passion an event arouses in the person directly concerned, a corresponding emotion arises in every attentive spectator at the thought of that person’s situation. Our joy at the rescue of heroes in tragedy or romance who have engaged our interest is as sincere as our grief at their distress; our fellow-feeling for their happiness is no less real than for their misery. We share their gratitude toward faithful friends who did not abandon them in hardship, and wholeheartedly join their resentment of treacherous people who injured, deserted, or deceived them. With every passion the human mind can experience, the bystander’s emotions correspond to those he imagines the sufferer should feel when he brings the case home to himself.

Pity and compassion are names for our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its original meaning may have been the same, can now without much impropriety denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.

At times sympathy may appear to arise merely from seeing a particular emotion in someone else. Passions can seem to pass from one person to another instantly, before we know what aroused them in the person directly concerned. Grief and joy, for instance, strongly expressed in a person’s face and gestures, immediately stir a measure of the same painful or pleasant emotion in an observer. A smiling face is a cheerful sight to everyone who sees it, just as a sorrowful face is a melancholy one.

This does not hold in every case, or for every passion. Some passions, when expressed, excite no sympathy at all; before we know what occasioned them, their expression instead disgusts us and provokes us against the person displaying them. An angry man’s furious conduct is more likely to exasperate us against him than against his enemies. Since we do not know what provoked him, we cannot bring his case home to ourselves or conceive anything resembling the passions it arouses. But we can plainly see the position of those at whom he is angry and the violence to which so enraged an adversary may expose them. We readily sympathize, then, with their fear or resentment and are immediately inclined to take their side against the man who appears to pose them so great a danger.

If the mere appearance of grief or joy inspires some degree of the same emotion in us, it is because it suggests, in general terms, some good or bad fortune that has come to the person displaying it; with these passions, this much is enough to move us a little. Grief and joy have their effects within the person who feels them. Their expression does not, like that of resentment, suggest some other person about whom we care whose interests oppose the sufferer’s. The general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, awakens some concern for the person who encounters it; the general idea of provocation awakens no sympathy with the anger of the person provoked. Nature seems to teach us to be more reluctant to share this passion and, until we learn its cause, to be inclined instead to take a stand against it.

Even our sympathy with another’s grief or joy, before we know its cause, is always exceedingly incomplete. General cries of lamentation, expressing nothing but the sufferer’s anguish, awaken curiosity about his circumstances and some inclination to sympathize, rather than much actual, appreciable sympathy. Our first question is, “What has happened to you?” Until we hear the answer, we are uneasy because of the vague notion of his misfortune, and more so because we torment ourselves guessing what it might be; still, our fellow-feeling is not very great.

Sympathy, then, arises less from seeing a passion than from seeing the situation that gives rise to it. We sometimes feel on another’s behalf a passion of which that person seems utterly incapable, because imagining ourselves in that person’s place gives rise to it in us, though the reality gives rise to none in the person concerned. We blush at another’s insolence and rudeness, though that person seems unaware of the impropriety of the conduct, because we cannot help feeling the embarrassment that would overwhelm us if we had behaved so absurdly.

Of all the calamities to which mortality exposes humankind, the loss of reason appears by far the most dreadful to anyone with the least spark of humanity; people behold that last extremity of human suffering with a deeper compassion than they feel for any other. Yet the unfortunate person in that condition may laugh and sing, altogether unaware of the misery. The anguish that humanity feels at this sight cannot, therefore, reflect any feeling of the sufferer. The spectator’s compassion must arise entirely from considering what the spectator would feel in that unhappy condition if—perhaps impossibly—he could still regard it with his present reason and judgment.

What pangs a mother feels when she hears the moans of her sick infant, unable in its agony to express what it feels! In imagining the child’s suffering, she combines its actual helplessness with her own awareness of that helplessness and her own fear of the unknown consequences of its illness. From all these things she forms, to her own sorrow, the fullest picture of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels only the discomfort of the present moment, which can never be great. It has no anxiety about the future; in its thoughtlessness and lack of foresight it possesses an antidote to fear and anxiety, those great tormentors of the human heart, against which reason and philosophy will try in vain to defend it when it becomes an adult.

We sympathize even with the dead. Overlooking what truly matters in their condition—the awesome future awaiting them—we are chiefly moved by circumstances that strike our senses but cannot affect their happiness. How miserable, we think, to be deprived of sunlight, cut off from life and conversation, laid in a cold grave as prey to decay and the creatures of the earth; to be thought of no longer in this world, and soon to vanish from the affections and almost the memories of one’s dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too deeply for those who have suffered such a dreadful calamity. Our tribute of fellow-feeling seems doubly owed to them now that everyone may forget them; through the futile honors we pay their memory, we deliberately keep alive, to our own sorrow, our melancholy recollection of their fate. That our sympathy cannot console them seems to add to their calamity. To think that everything we do is useless, that the regret, love, and lamentation of friends, which ease every other distress, can bring them no comfort, only sharpens our sense of their misery. Yet none of these circumstances can possibly affect the happiness of the dead; thoughts of them can never disturb the profound security of their rest. The idea of the bleak, endless melancholy that imagination naturally assigns to their condition comes entirely from joining our own awareness of their change to the change that has overtaken them. We put ourselves in their situation, lodge our own living souls, if I may put it so, in their lifeless bodies, and imagine what our feelings would be there. This very illusion of imagination makes the prospect of our own death so terrifying; circumstances that surely cannot cause us pain when we are dead make us miserable while we live. From it arises one of the most important principles of human nature: the dread of death, the great poison of human happiness but also the great restraint on human injustice. While it afflicts and humbles the individual, it guards and protects society.

Part I: On the Propriety of Action. In three sections.

Section I: On the Sense of Propriety.

On Sympathy.

No matter how selfish we think people are, human nature clearly includes some concern for what happens to others. Their happiness matters to us even when we gain nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Pity or compassion is one example: we feel it when we see someone suffering, or when we vividly imagine that suffering. It is obvious that other people's sadness often makes us sad, so there is no need to give examples to prove it. Like the other basic human passions, this feeling is not limited to good and kind people, though they may feel it most keenly. Even the worst criminal, however hardened and lawless, has some of it.

We cannot directly experience what someone else feels. The only way to imagine how a person is affected is to think about what we would feel in the same situation. If our brother is being tortured on the rack while we are comfortable, our senses cannot tell us what he suffers. Our senses have never taken us, and never can take us, beyond ourselves. Only imagination gives us an idea of his sensations. And imagination can do this only by showing us what our own sensations would be in his place. It copies the impressions of our senses, not his. In imagination we put ourselves in his situation. We picture ourselves enduring his torments, as though we entered his body and became him to some extent. This gives us an idea of his sensations, and even lets us feel something similar, though much weaker. When we make his suffering our own in this way, it begins to affect us. We tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. Any pain or distress causes deep sorrow when we experience it ourselves. Imagining ourselves in pain also causes some sorrow, depending on how vivid the image is.

Many familiar observations show that we feel for others in this way: we imagine changing places with the person who suffers. When we see a blow about to strike someone else's arm or leg, we instinctively pull back our own arm or leg. When the blow lands, we feel a little of its impact and are hurt by it too. People watching a tightrope dancer twist, turn, and balance their own bodies as they watch him do it. They feel they would have to move that way in his place. People with sensitive nerves and frail bodies say that seeing the exposed sores and ulcers of street beggars can make the corresponding parts of their own bodies itch or feel uncomfortable. The sight of those people's suffering horrifies them, and they imagine what they would suffer if they were in that condition and that part of their body had the same affliction. In a frail body, the strength of that thought alone can cause the itching or discomfort. Even strong people notice that looking at sore eyes can make their own eyes hurt noticeably. The reason is the same: even in the strongest person, the eyes are more delicate than any other part of the weakest person's body.

It is not just pain or sadness that prompts us to feel with others. Whatever feeling a situation causes in the person directly affected, an attentive observer feels something similar when thinking about that person's situation. We are genuinely happy when a hero in a tragedy or story escapes danger, just as we are genuinely sad when that hero suffers. We share the hero's happiness as truly as we share the suffering. We share the hero's gratitude to loyal friends who stayed through hard times, and we join in resentment toward treacherous people who injured, abandoned, or deceived the hero. Whatever the human passion, the observer's feeling corresponds to what the observer imagines the affected person should feel, after imagining the situation as their own.

Pity and compassion name the way we share another person's sadness. Sympathy may originally have meant the same thing, but we can now use it to mean sharing any kind of feeling.

Sometimes sympathy seems to arise simply from seeing someone else's emotion. A feeling can appear to pass from one person to another instantly, before the observer even knows its cause. For instance, someone's face and gestures can show strong grief or joy, and the observer immediately feels some of the same sadness or happiness. Anyone who sees a smiling face finds it cheerful; a sorrowful face, by contrast, looks sad.

But this does not happen with every feeling. The signs of some passions arouse no sympathy at all. Until we learn what caused them, they are more likely to repel us and turn us against the person showing them. An angry man's furious behavior is more likely to make us angry with him than with his enemies. We do not know what provoked him, so we cannot imagine ourselves in his position or feel anything like his anger. But we can see the position of the people he is angry with, and the danger they face from such a furious opponent. We easily share their fear or resentment, and at once tend to take their side against the man who threatens them.

The visible signs of grief and joy make us feel something similar because they suggest that something good or bad has happened to the person. For these feelings, that general idea is enough to move us a little. The effects of a person's grief or joy fall on that person. Unlike signs of resentment, they do not suggest another person whose interests conflict with theirs and whose welfare also concerns us. The mere idea of someone's good or bad fortune therefore gives us some concern for that person. But the mere idea of a provocation does not make us share the provoked person's anger. Nature seems to make us reluctant to share anger. Until we know its cause, we are more inclined to take a stand against it.

Even when we share someone else's grief or joy without knowing its cause, our sympathy is very incomplete. If a person cries out in general terms about their pain, we are mostly curious about what has happened. We may be ready to sympathize, but do not yet feel much actual sympathy. Our first question is, “What happened to you?” Until we get an answer, we feel uneasy because we vaguely sense a misfortune and, even more, because we torment ourselves guessing what it might be. But we still do not feel much with the person.

So sympathy comes less from seeing a feeling than from seeing the situation that causes it. Sometimes we feel something for another person that the person seems unable to feel. When we put ourselves in their place, imagination gives rise to a feeling in us that the actual situation does not produce in them. We blush at someone's shameless rudeness even though they seem unaware of anything wrong with their behavior. We cannot help imagining the embarrassment we would feel if we acted so absurdly.

To anyone with even a little humanity, losing the power of reason seems by far the worst of all the troubles to which mortal life exposes us. Such people view this final stage of human misery with deeper compassion than any other. Yet a person in that condition may laugh and sing, entirely unaware of their own misery. Our pain at seeing the person cannot be a reflection of what they feel. The observer's compassion must come entirely from imagining how it would feel to be in the same unhappy state while somehow still able to judge it with the reason and judgment the observer now possesses—even though that may be impossible.

How much a mother suffers when she hears her sick infant moan in pain but cannot learn what it feels! In imagining the baby's suffering, she adds her own awareness of its helplessness to the helplessness it actually has. She adds her fear of the unknown consequences of the illness. Together these produce the fullest possible picture of misery and distress in her own mind. The baby, however, feels only its discomfort in the present moment, which can never be very great. It has no worries about the future. Its lack of thought and foresight protects it from fear and anxiety, those great torments of the human mind. When the child grows up, reason and philosophy will try in vain to provide that protection.

We even sympathize with the dead. We overlook what really matters about their condition—the fearful future awaiting them—and are chiefly affected by things we can picture but that cannot affect their happiness. We think it miserable to lose the sunlight, be cut off from life and conversation, lie in a cold grave as the body decays and becomes food for creatures in the earth, and soon vanish from the thoughts, feelings, and almost even the memories of those who loved them most. We imagine that we can never feel too much for people who have suffered such a terrible loss. We feel that they deserve our sympathy especially now, when everyone may forget them. We give them empty honors to preserve our sad memory of their fate, making ourselves miserable in the process. It seems to make their loss worse that our sympathy cannot comfort them. We think that everything we do is useless, and that even the regret, love, and tears of friends—which ease every other kind of distress—cannot help them. That thought only makes us feel their misery more strongly. But none of these things can affect the happiness of the dead. Nor can thoughts of them disturb the deep security of their rest. We imagine their state as an endless, bleak sadness only because we add our own awareness of the change to the change that has happened to them. We put ourselves in their position. We imagine, so to speak, placing our living souls in their lifeless bodies, and think of what we would feel there. This illusion is exactly why the thought of our own death frightens us so much. We are miserable while alive at the thought of conditions that certainly cannot hurt us once we are dead. It also gives rise to one of the most important parts of human nature: our fear of death. That fear is a great poison to human happiness, but also a great check on human injustice. It troubles and humbles each person, while guarding and protecting society.