Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/231

ADAM SMITH. 209 ^e former. The difference of intensity between the origi- nal and the sympathetic feelings differs widely with the various classes of emotions. It is difficult to take part in feelings which arise from bodily conditions, but easy to share ihose in the production of which the imagination is con- cerned — hence easier to share in hope and fear than in pleasure and pain. — We sympathize more readily with feel- ings which are agreeable to the observer, the observed, and other participants than with such as are not so ; more willingly, therefore, with cheerfulness, love, benevolence than with grief, hatred, malevolence. This is not only true of temporary affections, but especially of those general dispositions which depend on a more or less happy situation in life ; we sympathize more vividly with the fortunes of the rich and noble, because we consider them happier than the poor and lowly. Wealth and high rank are objects of general desire chiefly because their possessor enjoys the advantage of knowing that whatever gives him joy or sor- row always arouses similar feelings in countless other men. The root of all ambition is the wish to rule over the hearts of our fellows by compelling them to make our feelings their own ; the central nerve of all happiness consists in seeing our own sensations shared by those about us and reflected back, as it were, from manifold mirrors. Small annoy- ances often have a diverting effect on the spectator; great success easily excites his envy ; great sorrows and minor joys, on the contrary, are always sure of our sym- pathy. Hence the morose man, to whom everything is an occasion of ill-humor, is nowhere welcome, and the man of cheerful disposition, who rejoices in each little event and whose good spirits are contagious, everywhere. Not less admirable than the fine gift of observation which guides Smith in his discovery of the primary mani- festations and the laws of sympathy is the skill with which he deduces moral phenomena, from the simplest to the most complex — moral judgment, the moral law, its appli- cation to one's own conduct, the conscience — from the inter- change of sympathetic feelings. From involuntary com- parison of the representative feeling of the spectator with its original in the person observed arises an agreeable o«