2.—Kindness.

There is nothing which more instantly associates with itself the ideas of our own Pleasures, and Pains, 217 than the idea of the Pleasures and Pains of another of our Fellow-creatures. The expositions already afforded sufficiently indicate the source of this association, which exerts a powerful and salutary influence in human life.

The idea of a man enjoying a train of pleasures, or happiness, is felt by every body to be a pleasurable idea. The idea of a man under a train of sufferings or pains, is equally felt to be a painful idea. This can arise from nothing but the association of our own pleasures with the first idea, and of our own pains with the second. We never feel any pains and pleasures but our own. The fact, indeed, is, that our very idea of the pains or pleasures of another man is only the idea of our own pains, or our own pleasures, associated with the idea of another man. This is one not of the least important, and curious, of all cases of association, and instantly shews how powerfully associated trains of ideas of our pains and pleasures must be with a feeling so compounded.43

43 That the pleasures or pains of another person can only be pleasurable or painful to us through the association of our own pleasures or pains with them, is true in one sense, which is probably that intended by the author, but not true in another, against which he has not sufficiently guarded his mode of expression. It is evident, that the only pleasures or pains of which we have direct experience being those felt by ourselves, it is from them that our very notions of pleasure and pain are derived. It is also obvious that the pleasure or pain with which we contemplate the pleasure or pain felt by somebody else, is itself a pleasure or pain of our own. But if it be meant that in such cases the pleasure or pain is consciously referred to self, I take this to be a mistake. By the acts or other signs exhibited by another person, the idea of a pleasure (which is a pleasurable idea) or the idea of a pain (which is a painful idea) are recalled, sometimes with considerable intensity, but in association with the other person as feeling them, not with one’s self as feeling them. The idea of one’s Self is, no doubt, closely associated with all our experiences, pleasurable, painful, or indifferent; but this association does not necessarily act in all cases because it exists in all cases. If the mind, when pleasurably or painfully affected by the evidences of pleasure or pain in another person, goes off on a different thread of association, as for instance, to the idea of the means of giving the pleasure or relieving the pain, or even if it dismisses the subject and relapses into the ordinary course of its thoughts, the association with its own self may be, at the time, defeated, or reduced to something so evanescent that we cannot tell whether it was momentarily present or not.—Ed.

218 The Pleasurable association composed of the ideas of a man and his pleasures, and the painful association composed of the ideas of a man and his pains, are both Affections, which have so much of the same tendency that they are included under one name, Kindness; though the latter affection has a name appropriate to itself, Compassion.