There are often three distinct perceptions or inward feelings upon sight of persons in distress: real sorrow and concern for the misery of our fellow-creatures; some degree of satisfaction from a consciousness of our freedom from that misery; and as the mind passes on from one thing to another it is not unnatural from such an occasion to reflect upon our own liableness to the same or other calamities. The two last frequently accompany the first, but it is the first _only_ which is properly compassion, of which the distressed are the objects, and which directly carries us with calmness and thought to their assistance. Any one of these, from various and complicated reasons, may in particular cases prevail over the other two; and there are, I suppose, instances, where the bare _sight_ of distress, without our feeling any compassion for it, may be the occasion of either or both of the two latter perceptions. One might add that if there be really any such thing as the fiction or imagination of danger to ourselves from sight of the miseries of others, which Hobbes specks of, and which he has absurdly mistaken for the whole of compassion; if there be anything of this sort common to mankind, distinct from the reflection of reason, it would be a most remarkable instance of what was furthest from his thoughts--namely, of a mutual sympathy between each particular of the species, a fellow-feeling common to mankind. It would not indeed be an example of our substituting others for ourselves, but it would be an example of user substituting ourselves for others. And as it would not be an instance of benevolence, so neither would it be any instance of self-love: for this phantom of danger to ourselves, naturally rising to view upon sight of the distresses of others, would be no more an instance of love to ourselves than the pain of hunger is. {14} Ecclus. xxxii. 28. {15} Ecclus. xlii. 24. {16} Ver. 4, 5. {17} Ver. 6. {18} Micah vi. {19} Chap. xxii. 12. {20} Ver. 21. {21} Chap. iv. {22} Chap. xxv. {23} Chap. xxxi. {24} Chap. ii. {24a} In the Cassell edition the sermons jump from sermon VII to XI with no explanation as to where VIII, IX and X are. I've left the numbering as is in case there is a good reason for it.--DP. {25} P. 137. {26} Matt. v. 48. {27} 1 Cor. xiii.