Chapter I., entitled, "Of Sympathy," is a felicitous illustration of
the general nature and workings of Sympathy. He calls in the experience
of all mankind to attest the existence of our sympathetic impulses. He
shows through what medium sympathy operates; namely, by our placing
ourselves in the situation of the other party, and imagining what we
should feel in that case. He produces the most notable examples of the
impressions made on us by our witnessing the actions, the pleasurable
and the painful expression of others; effects extending even to
fictitious representations. He then remarks that, although on some
occasions, we take on simply and purely the feelings manifested in our
presence,--the grief or joy of another man, yet this is far from the
universal case: a display of angry passion may produce in us hostility
and disgust; but this very result may be owing to our sympathy for the
person likely to suffer from the anger. So our sympathy for grief or
for joy is imperfect until we know the cause, and may be entirely
suppressed. We take the whole situation into view, as well as the
expression of the feeling. Hence we often feel for another person what
that person does not feel for himself; we act out our own view of the
situation, not his. We feel for the insane what they do not feel; we
sympathize even with the dead.
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