[xxxvi. 16]

1820. April 9.

First Lines

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