sity, and of duration of this idea.

1st. The moral faculty is provoked to reaction in proportion to the
vividness of ideas in the soul, which incites it to activity and solicits
its sensuous faculty. Now the ideas of suffering are conceived in two
different manners, which are not equally favorable to the vividness of
the impression. The sufferings that we witness affect us incomparably
more than those that we have through a description or a narrative. The
former suspend in us the free play of the fancy, and striking our senses
immediately penetrate by the shortest road to our heart. In the
narrative, on the contrary, the particular is first raised to the
general, and it is from this that the knowledge of the special case is
afterwards derived; accordingly, merely by this necessary operation of
the understanding, the impression already loses greatly in strength. Now
a weak impression cannot take complete possession of our mind, and it
will allow other ideas to disturb its action and to dissipate the
attention. Very frequently, moreover, the narrative account transports
us from the moral disposition, in which the acting person is placed, to
the state of mind of the narrator himself, which breaks up the illusion
so necessary for pity. In every case, when the narrator in person puts
himself forward, a certain stoppage takes place in the action, and, as an
unavoidable result, in our sympathetic affection. This is what happens
even when the dramatic poet forgets himself in the dialogue, and puts in
the mouth of his dramatic persons reflections that could only enter the
mind of a disinterested spectator. It would be difficult to mention a
single one of our modern tragedies quite free from this defect; but the
French alone have made a rule of it. Let us infer, then, that the
immediate vivid and sensuous presence of the object is necessary to give
to the ideas impressed on us by suffering that strength without which the
emotion could not rise to a high degree.

2d. But we can receive the most vivid impressions of the idea of
suffering without, however, being led to a remarkable degree of pity, if
these impressions lack truth. It is, necessary that we should form of
suffering an idea of such a nature that we are obliged to share and take
part in it. To this end there must be a certain agreement between this
suffering and something that we have already in us. In other words, pity
is only possible inasmuch as we can prove or suppo