eir exact due proportion to each
other, though they often strive for mastery with judgment or reflection,
yet, since the superiority of this principle to all others is the chief
respect which forms the constitution, so far as this superiority is
maintained, the character, the man, is good, worthy, virtuous.

{8} Chap. iii., ver. 6.

{9} Job xiii. 5.

{10} Eccles. x. 3.

{11} Prov. x. 19.

{12} Mark xii. 38, 40.

{13} There being manifestly this appearance of men's substituting others
for themselves, and being carried out and affected towards them as
towards themselves; some persons, who have a system which excludes every
affection of this sort, have taken a pleasant method to solve it; and
tell you it is _not another_ you are at all concerned about, but your
_self only_, when you feel the affection called compassion, _i.e._ Here
is a plain matter of fact, which men cannot reconcile with the general
account they think fit to give of things: they therefore, instead of that
manifest fact, substitute _another_, which is reconcilable to their own
scheme. For does not everybody by compassion mean an affection, the
object of which is another in distress? instead of this, but designing to
have it mistaken for this, they speak of an affection or passion, the
object of which is ourselves, or danger to ourselves. Hobbes defines
_pity_, _imagination_, _or fiction of future calamity to ourselves_,
_proceeding from the sense_ (he means sight or knowledge) _of another
man's calamity_. Thus fear and compassion would be the same idea, and a
fearful and a compassionate man the same character, which every one
immediately sees are totally different. Further, to those who give any
scope to their affections, there is no perception or inward feeling more
universal than this: that one who has been merciful and compassionate
throughout the course of his behaviour should himself be treated with
kindness, if he happens to fall into circumstances of distress. Is fear,
then, or cowardice, so great a recommendation to the favour of the bulk
of mankind? Or is it not plain that mere fearlessness (and therefore not
the contrary) is one of the most popular qualifications? This shows that
mankind are not affected towards compassion as fear, but as somewhat
totally different.

Nothing would more expose such accounts as these of the affections which
are favourable and friendly to our fellow-creatures than to substitute
the definitions