[xxxvi. 7]

1821. April 26.

First Lines

Constitutional Finance?

2. To the quantum of the sacrifice which, by the influence of self-regarding interest, in proportion to the height of his situation in this scale is at the same time, incited and enabled to make of the greatest happiness of the greatest number to his own private interest according to the connection he entertains of it, social affection, sympathy, supposing it to have place, might, with an effective force proportioned to its intensity, apply a limitative check. But, in the universe, and not in this same scale, will be the intensity and efficiency of this efficient cause of, and security for, good behaviour. The sympathy here in question is sympathy of affection: that faculty in virtue of which, from /by/ the sight of others exhibiting marks of sorrow /suffering/, he himself is effected by suffering; from the sight of others exhibiting marks of enjoyment, he himself reaps enjoyment.

But this sympathy of affection has, for its indispensable accompaniment or precursor, a correspondent sympathy of conception: only in consequence of, and in proportion to, the conception a man entertains of the suffering experienced by another, can he be made by it to experience suffering in any shape, howsoever assured of its existence. A man who has never, in any painful degree, known by his experience what hunger is, can never be made to feel any considerable uneasiness by any such information as that at the very time /moment/ at which the information reaches his ears other men, be the multitude of them ever so great, are experiencing that same sort of pain in a degree ever so intense.

Sympathy of conception may never have place where sympathy of affection is altogether absent /has not place in any degree/: a man who, by /from/ his own experience, has derived the most perfect conception of the pains of burning may, without imbibing any uneasiness from the sight, behold others while in a state of suffering produced by that excrutiative operation: so far from suffering, enjoyment has, in so many and such notorious instances by that same cause: but without correspondent sympathy of conception sympathy of affection is impossible.