Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/56

 on sentiment or moral causes. It is however neither so complete nor durable; as these last, being the creatures of imagination, appeal more strongly to our sympathy, which is itself an act of the imagination, than mere physical evils can ever do, whether they relate to ourselves or others. Our sympathy with physical evil is also a more unpleasant feeling, and therefore submitted to with more reluctance. So that it is necessary to take another circumstance into the account in judging of the quantity of our sympathy, besides the two above mentioned; namely, the nature of the pain or it's fitness to excite our sympathy. This makes no difference in the question.

To say that the child recollects the pain of being burnt only in connection with his own idea, and can therefore conceive of it as an evil only with respect to himself, is in effect to deny the existence of any such power as the imagination. By the same power of mind which enables him to conceive of a past sensation as about to be re- excited in the same being, namely, himself, he must be capable of transferring the same idea of pain to a different person. He creates the object, he pushes his ideas beyond the bounds of his memory and senses in the first instance, and he does no more in the second. If his mind were