Hume’s Sympathy

But here there occurs a considerable objection, which it will be necessary to examine before we proceed any farther.

Power and riches, or poverty and meanness:

• cause love or hatred without producing any original pleasure or uneasiness.
• operate on us through a secondary sensation derived from a sympathy with that pain or satisfaction they produce in the person who has them.

Love arises from a sympathy with his pleasure.

Hatred arises from a sympathy with his uneasiness.

But I have just established a maxim which is absolutely necessary to explain the phenomena of pity and malice:

• The present sensation or momentary pain or pleasure does not determine the character of any passion.
• Instead, it is the sensation’s general bent or tendency from the beginning to the end.

This is why pity, or a sympathy with pain, produces love.

Sympathy:

• interests us in the good or bad fortunes of others
• gives us a secondary sensation correspondent to the primary sensation; in which it has the same influence with love and benevolence.

This rule holds good in one case.

Why does it not prevail throughout?

Why does sympathy in uneasiness ever produce any passion beside goodwill and kindness?

Does a philosopher:

• alter his method of reasoning
• run from one principle to its contrary, according to the particular phenomenon he explains?

I have mentioned two different causes from which a transition of passion may arise:

• a double relation of ideas and impressions
• a conformity in the tendency and direction of any two desires arising from different principles.

When a sympathy with uneasiness is:

• weak, it produces hatred or contempt by a double relation
• strong, it produces love or tenderness by a conformity of two desires.

This is the solution of the foregoing urgent difficulty.

This principle is founded on evident arguments.

We should have established it even though it was unnecessary to the explanation of any phenomenon.

Sympathy is not always limited to the present moment.

We often feel the pains and pleasures of others by communication, which:

• are not in being
• we only anticipate by the imagination’s force.

If I saw a person, perfectly unknown to me, sleeping in the fields in danger of being trod under foot by horses, I would immediately run to his assistance.

I am actuated by the same principle of sympathy.

This makes me concerned for the stranger’s present sorrows.

The bare mention of this is sufficient.

Sympathy is nothing but a lively idea converted into an impression.

In considering the possible or probable future condition of anyone, we may:

• enter into it with so vivid a conception as to make it our own concern.
• consequently be sensible of pains and pleasures which do not:
  • belong to ourselves
  • exist at present.

The extension of our sympathy depends largely on our sense of his present condition.

A great effort is needed to imagine such lively ideas of the present sentiments of others, as to feel them.

But we could never extend this sympathy to the future, without being aided by some circumstance which strikes on us in a lively manner in the present.

When another’s present misery has any strong influence on me, the conception’s vivacity is not confined merely to its immediate object

• It diffuses its influence over all the related ideas.
• It gives me a lively notion of all the circumstances of that person, whether:
  • past, present, or future;
  • possible, probable or certain.

Through this lively notion, I :

• am interested in them
• take part with them
• feel a sympathetic motion in my breast, conformable to whatever I imagine in his breast.

If I reduce the first conception’s vivacity, I reduce the vivacity of the related ideas, as pipes can convey no more water than what arises at the fountain.

By this reduction, I destroy the future prospect necessary to interest me perfectly in the another’s fortune.

I may feel the present impression, but I:

• carry my sympathy no further
• never transfuse the first conception’s force into my ideas of the related objects.

If it is another’s misery presented in this feeble manner, I:

• receive it by communication
• am affected with all the passions related to it.

But I am not so much concerned in his good or bad fortune, I never feel:

• the extensive sympathy, nor
• the passions related to it.

To know what passions are related to these different kinds of sympathy, we must consider that benevolence is an original pleasure arising from:

• the pleasure of the person beloved
• the pain proceeding from his pain

From this correspondence of impressions, arises a subsequent:

• desire of his pleasure
• aversion to his pain

To make a passion run parallel with benevolence, we need to feel these double impressions, correspondent to the impressions of the person, whom we consider.

Any one of them alone is insufficient for that purpose.