CHAPTER X.

On Sympathy and Sensibility.

THE artless expressions of sympathy and sensibility in children are peculiarly are peculiarly pleasing; people who, in their commerce with the world, have been disgusted and deceived by falsehood and affectation, listen with delight to the genuine language of nature. Those who have any interest in the education of children have yet a higher sense of pleasure in observing symptoms of their sensibility; they anticipate the future virtues which early sensibility seems certainly to promise; the future happiness which these virtues will diffuse. Nor are they unsupported by philosophy in these sanguine hopes. theory was ever developed with more ingenious elegance, than that which deduces all our moral sentiments from sympathy. The direct influence of sympathy upon all social beings is sufficiently obvious, and we immediately perceive its necessary connection with compassion, friendship, and

No

benevolence; but the subject becomes more intricate when we are to analyse our sense of propriety and justice; of merit and demerit; of gratitude and resentment; self-complacency or remorse; ambition and shame.*

We allow, without hesitation, that a being destitute of sympathy could never have any of these feelings, and must consequently be incapable of all intercourse with society; yet we must at the same time perceive, that a being endowed with the most exquisite sympathy must, without the assistance and education of reason, be, if not equally incapable of social intercourse, far more dangerous to the happiness of society. A person governed by sympathy alone must be influenced by the bad as well as by the good passions of others; he must feel resentment with the angry man; hatred with the malevolent; jealousy with the jealous; and avarice with the miser: the more lively his sympathy with these painful feelings, the greater must be his misery: the more forcibly he is impelled to action by this sympathetic influence, the greater, probably, must be his imprudence and his guilt. Let us even suppose a being capable of sympathising only with the best feelings of his fellowcreatures, still, without the direction of reason,

*Adam Smith.

he would be a nuisance in the world; his pity would stop the hand, and overturn the balance of justice; his love would be as dangerous as his pity; his gratitude would exalt his benefactor at the expense of the whole human race ; his sympathy with the rich, the prosperous, the great, and the fortunate, would be so sudden, and so violent, as to leave him no time for reflection upon the consequences of tyranny, or the miseries occasioned by monopoly. No time for reflection, did we say? We forgot that we were speaking of a being destitute of the reasoning faculty! Such a being, no matter what his virtuous sympathies might be, must act either like a madman or a fool. On sympathy we cannot depend either for the correctness of a man's moral sentiments, or for the steadiness of his moral conduct. It is very common to talk of the excellence of a person's heart; of the natural goodness of his disposition; when these expressions distinctly mean any thing, they must refer to natural sympathy, or a superior degree of sensibility. Experience, however; does not teach us, that sensibility and virtue have any certain connexion with each other. No one can read the works of Sterne, or of Rousseau, without believing these men to have been endowed with extraordinary sensibility; yet who would propose their conduct in life as a model

for imitation? That quickness of sympathy with present objects of distress, which constitutes compassion, is usually thought a virtue, but it is a virtue frequently found in persons of abandoned character.

66

Should any one of us," says Mandeville,* * "be locked up in a ground-room, where in a yard joining to it there was a thriving good"humoured child at play, of two or three years "old, so near us that through the grates of the "window. we could almost touch it with our "hands; and if, whilst we took delight in the "harmless diversion, and imperfect prattle, of "the innocent babe, a nasty, overgrown sow "should come in upon the child, set it a scream"ing, and frighten it out of its wits; it is natural "to think that this would make us uneasy, and "that with crying out, and making all the

66

menacing noise we could, we should endeavour "to drive the sow away. But if this should "happen to be an half-starved creature, that, mad "with hunger, went roaming about in quest of "food, and we should behold the ravenous "brute, in spite of our cries, and all the threatening gestures we could think of, actually

66

66

lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and "devour it ;-to see her widely open her de

* Essay upon Charity Schools.

"structive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down "with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, "then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout

66

66

digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the "smoaking blood, and now and then to hear "the crackling of the bones, and the cruel ani"mal grunt with savage pleasure over the hor"rid banquet; to hear and see all this, what ❝ torture would it give the soul beyond expres❝sion! "Not only a man of humanity, of good morals, "and commiseration, but likewise an highway"man, an housebreaker, or a murderer, could "feel anxieties on such an occasion."

*

*

Amongst those monsters, who are pointed out by historians to the just detestation of all mankind, we meet with instances of casual sympathy and sensibility; even their vices frequently prove to us, that they never became utterly indifferent to the opinion and feelings of their fellow-creatures. The dissimulation, jealousy, · suspicion, and cruelty of Tiberius, originated perhaps, more in his anxiety about the opinions which were formed of his character, than in his fears of any conspiracies against his life. The "judge within," the habit of viewing his own conduct in the light in which it was beheld by the impartial spectator, prompted him to new crimes;