ure, which determines the
character of any passion, but the general bent or tendency of it from
the beginning to the end. For this reason, pity or a sympathy with
pain produces love, and that because it interests us in the fortunes of
others, good or bad, and gives us a secondary sensation correspondent
to the primary; in which it has the same influence with love and
benevolence. Since then this rule holds good in one case, why does it
not prevail throughout, and why does sympathy in uneasiness ever produce
any passion beside good-will and kindness? Is it becoming a philosopher
to alter his method of reasoning, and run from one principle to its
contrary, according to the particular phaenomenon, which he would
explain?

I have mentioned two different causes, from which a transition of
passion may arise, viz, a double relation of ideas and impressions, and
what is similar to it, a conformity in the tendency and direction of any
two desires, which arise from different principles. Now I assert, that
when a sympathy with uneasiness is weak, it produces hatred or contempt
by the former cause; when strong, it produces love or tenderness by the
latter. This is the solution of the foregoing difficulty, which seems so
urgent; and this is a principle founded on such evident arguments, that
we ought to have established it, even though it were not necessary to
the explication of any phaenomenon.

It is certain, that sympathy is not always limited to the present
moment, but that we often feel by communication the pains and pleasures
of others, which are not in being, and which we only anticipate by the
force of imagination. For supposing I saw a person perfectly unknown to
me, who, while asleep in the fields, was in danger of being trod under
foot by horses, I should immediately run to his assistance; and in this
I should be actuated by the same principle of sympathy, which makes me
concerned for the present sorrows of a stranger. The bare mention of
this is sufficient. Sympathy being nothing but a lively idea converted
into an impression, it is evident, that, in considering the future
possible or probable condition of any person, we may enter into it with
so vivid a conception as to make it our own concern; and by that means
be sensible of pains and pleasures, which neither belong to ourselves,
nor at the present instant have any real existence.

But however we may look forward to the future in sympathizing with any
person, the e