ed to us. All human creatures are related to us by resemblance.
Their persons, therefore, their interests, their passions, their pains
and pleasures must strike upon us in a lively manner, and produce an
emotion similar to the original one; since a lively idea is easily
converted into an impression. If this be true in general, it must be
more so of affliction and sorrow. These have always a stronger and more
lasting influence than any pleasure or enjoyment.

A spectator of a tragedy passes through a long train of grief, terror,
indignation, and other affections, which the poet represents in the
persons he introduces. As many tragedies end happily, and no excellent
one can be composed without some reverses of fortune, the spectator must
sympathize with all these changes, and receive the fictitious joy as
well as every other passion. Unless, therefore, it be asserted, that
every distinct passion is communicated by a distinct original
quality, and is not derived from the general principle of sympathy
above-explained, it must be allowed, that all of them arise from
that principle. To except any one in particular must appear highly
unreasonable. As they are all first present in the mind of one person,
and afterwards appear in the mind of another; and as the manner of their
appearance, first as an idea, then as an impression, is in every case
the same, the transition must arise from the same principle. I am
at least sure, that this method of reasoning would be considered as
certain, either in natural philosophy or common life.

Add to this, that pity depends, in a great measure, on the contiguity,
and even sight of the object; which is a proof, that it is derived from
the imagination. Not to mention that women and children are most subject
to pity, as being most guided by that faculty. The same infirmity, which
makes them faint at the sight of a naked sword, though in the hands of
their best friend, makes them pity extremely those, whom they find in
any grief or affliction. Those philosophers, who derive this passion
from I know not what subtile reflections on the instability of fortune,
and our being liable to the same miseries we behold, will find this
observation contrary to them among a great many others, which it were
easy to produce.

There remains only to take notice of a pretty remarkable phaenomenon
of this passion; which is, that the communicated passion of sympathy
sometimes acquires strength from the weakness of