Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/308

292 perception, when produced, does not contain within itself any marks imprinted upon it by the machinery which has produced it. For we must remember that always in the Treatise all simple perceptions are original existences in the sense that they do not admit of any analysis. If, therefore, we sympathize with a simple perception in another person, the perception we experience by sympathy is as simple as its prototype. If that prototype has no reference to us, neither does the sympathetic perception have any reference to us. This lack of reference to ourselves in such a sympathetic perception is not due to the fact that it has been worn away by custom. It was never there to begin with. This is one of the most important points to grasp in order to understand the nature of sympathetic perceptions as presented in the Treatise. The failure to bear this point in mind is accountable for the erroneous characterization of sympathetic perceptions as egoistic on Hume's showing. Let us now make good our assertion of the non-egoistic character of sympathy in the Treatise by an examination of the passages which deal with the mechanism that produces it.

"When any affection is infus'd by sympathy, it is at first known only by its effects, and by those external signs in the countenance and conversation, which convey an idea of it." For example, John Smith has some affection, and we get an idea of this affection he has from the various indications that give expression to it. Suppose that affection be a desire to get rid of a certain pain he has. The idea we get, from the various indications given by him, is, then, an idea of a desire to get rid not of our own but of John Smith's pain. Therefore, John Smith's desire to get rid of his own pain, when it first makes its appearance in our mind as an idea, does not become an idea of a desire to get rid of our pain. Our pain does not enter into the content of the idea at all. "This idea is presently converted into an impression, and acquires such a degree of force and vivacity, as to become the very passion itself, and produce an equal emotion, as any original affection." Or as Hume puts it in another