date

[xxxvi. 8] 1821. Aril 26. First
[xxxvi. 8]

1821. Aril 26.

First Lines

Constitutional Finance?

3. Where, at the first commencement of the habit of witnessing, with or without the habit of producing, sufferance, sympathetic suffering has ben produced by the sight of it, the continuance of the habit will, sooner or later, extinguish the sympathy. It is thus extinguished, for example as abovementioned, in the surgeon, or he would not be fit for the exercise of his beneficent art. It is thus nearly if not altogether extinguished, supposing it originally to have had place, in the breast of the military conqueror, or he would not be fit for the exercise of his maleficent art. The mother, who has lately lost a son in battle, has some conception of what the miseries of war are, and feels and grieves accordingly for those who are partakers of them. Under a monarchy, absolute or limited, among the functionaries in the higher ranks, commencing with the monarch, so confirmed is the habit of hearing of men by thousands, and tens of thousands slaughtered or reduced from happiness to misery by the operations, by the orders given by these their rulers for the purpose of giving further and further extension to their own power, factitious dignity, and opulence no greater portion of sympathetic suffering is prduced in such breasts by the tidings of any such catastrophe than has place in the breast of a gardener while he is setting his foot on a swarm of caterpillars. The same monarch in whose breast the sight of a favourite, suffering from a hurt experienced in the course of a floric /frolic/, had in early youth produced an almost equal pain of sympathy will, as ambition encreases and sympathetic sensibility decreases, receive with indifference the news of a limb lost by that same favourite in company with thousands of limbs and as many lives lost by others in the course of a battle from which the power of the wholesale manufacturer of human misery is thought as receiving /regarded as receiving/ encrease.

As it is with the universal superor, so it is with the subordinates: quantities and degrees being proportioned to the place occupied by them respectively in the gorgeous scale.
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    In respect of {comparative} appropriate aptitude, taken in all its several points, note then how the case /comparison/ stands as between all these several rival sets. And in the first place in regard to probity.

    The existence of sympathetic interest and affection in every human breast without exception is a matter of fact which upon a due consideration will it is believed be found to be /stand/ above dispute.

    In every human-breast self regarding affection has place. It[?] belongs[?] & has sympathetic affection. In every breast they are mixt: in different breasts in proportions widely different: In every breast the self-regarding is the stronger. Upon its being so depends the existence of the species. In some breasts sympathetic affection has not for its object any but individuals: in others those /it has whole/ classes: classes which in the case of different breasts are are more and more extensive till at last they are coextensive with the whole aggregate of human and even sensitive beings.

    But the more excluded the class, the fainter the sympathy: in any individual even it otherwise the contemplation of the quantity of suffering proceeding /attached to/ this or that class would of itself suffer to keep that same individual perpetually plunged during life in misery.

    And so conversely in the case of comfort.

    But not only (which is sufficient) in the breasts of the generality of mankind, but, when considered /taken/ through the whole of life in every human breast without exception its /the/ inferiority in point of force to self-regarding interest and affection, will it is believed upon like consideration be found to stand equally above /out of/ dispute. Upon any such consideration as above what it will ever be found is - that upon no other condition could the species so much as have existence.

    Moreover /But/ when operating upon a scale {in any degree} inferior to that by which the greatest happiness of the greatest number is embraced, the {measures dictated} /conduct & effects/ produced even by /by the force even of/ sympathetic interest and affection are liable to be no less adverse to the universal interest than those produced by self-regarding interest. The interest by which a man is set to work to contribute to the happiness of a wife or a child on an occasion on which their happiness is no otherwise concerned than {in so far as it makes a part of his own happiness} in so far as his own happiness depends upon the view he takes of theirs, is, if there be any such thing, a purely sympathetic interest. But in case of a sacrifice made of the universal interest to the {self-regarding} interest of an individual, the mischief of that sacrifice is just the same whether the individual interest to which the universal is thus sacrificed /sacrifice is made/, is the interest of the author of such /the/ sacrifice, or the interest of any other individual.

    Thus it is that, in opposition to it, sympathetic interest and affection - that sympathetic interest and affection, which operates upon the all comprehensive scale - is constantly finding out not only self-regarding interest and affection, but also an interest of its own sort and of its own name operating in conjunction with self-regarding interest and upon the same narrow scale.
  • Title: [[xxxvi. 16] 1820. April 9.]
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    2. The higher the degree of opulence, the less the degree of sympathy, in the breast of the opulent for the unopulent: for that portion of mankind in behalf of whom the demand for such beneficence as it may be in his way to exercise is greatest.

    Correspondent to, and intimately connected with sympathy of affection, is sympathy of conception.

    By and in proportion to sympathy of affection, a man is disposed to add to the enjoyments, and subtract from the sufferings, of the objects of his sympathy.

    Proprtioned to the correctness clearness and compleatness of the conception a man has of those enjoyments and these sufferings, (the /his/ degree of sensibility being given,) is the strength of the sympathy of affection with relation to those same objects of his sympathy.

    Relative Sympathy being wanting, sympathy of affection may be equally wanting, although sympathy of conception be entire: but in so far as sympathy of conception is wanting, sympathy of conception /affection/ has no place.

    For all bodily pains, sympathy of conception must, on the part of the experienced surgeon, be grater than on the part of an average man. But if his sensibility and consequently if his sympathy of affection were so likewise, he would not be fit for the exercise of his art.

    Want of sympathy of conception concurrs with the feeling of relative independence in destroying in the breast of the opulent, sensibility, and, with it, beneficence positive and negative, with relation to the unopulent: he has no need of their free services: their free and gratuitous services: he has no conception of their wants: he has no feeling for their wants.

    So
  • Title: [[xxxvi. 7] 1821. April 26.]
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    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.