Page:The Theory of Moral Sentiments.pdf/12

Rh when we either ee it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive orrow from the orrow of others is a matter of fact too obvious to require any intances to prove it; for this entiment, like all the other original paions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the mot exquiite enibilty. The greatet ruffian, the mot hardened violator of the laws of ociety, is not altogether without it.

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourelves hould feel in the like ituation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourelves are at our eae, our enes will never inform us of what he uffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own perons, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his enations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by repreenting to us what would be our own, if we were in his cae. It is the impreions of our own enes only, not thoe of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourelves enduring all the ame torments, we enter as it were into his body and become in ome meaure him, and thence form ome idea of his enations, and even feel omething which, though weaker in