It is the same case with those passions we have been just now
considering. Their immediate effects are so disagreeable, that even
when they are most justly provoked, there is still something about
them which disgusts us. These, therefore, are the only passions of
which the expressions, as I formerly observed, do not dispose and
prepare us to sympathize with them, before we are informed of the
cause which excites them. The plaintive voice of misery, when heard at
a distance, will not allow us to be indifferent about the person from
whom it comes. As soon as it strikes our ear, it interests us in his
fortune, and, if continued, forces us almost involuntarily to fly to
his assistance. The sight of a smiling countenance, in the same
manner, elevates even the pensive into that gay and airy mood, which
disposes him to sympathize with, and share the joy which it expresses;
and he feels his heart, which with thought and care was before that
shrunk and depressed, instantly expanded and elated. But it is quite
otherwise with the expressions of hatred and resentment. The hoarse,
boisterous, and discordant voice of anger, when heard at a distance,
inspires us either with fear or aversion. We do not fly towards it, as
to one who cries out with pain and agony. Women, and men of weak
nerves, tremble and are overcome with fear, though sensible that
themselves are not the objects of the anger. They conceive fear,
however, by putting themselves in the situation of the person who is
so. Even those of stouter hearts are disturbed; not indeed enough to
make them afraid, but enough to make them angry; for anger is the
passion which they would feel in the situation of the other person. It
is the same case with hatred. Mere expressions of spite inspire it
against nobody, but the man who uses them. Both these passions are by
nature the objects of our aversion. Their disagreeable and boisterous
appearance never excites, never prepares, and often disturbs our
sympathy. Grief does not more powerfully engage and attract us to the
person in whom we observe it, than these, while we are ignorant of
their cause, disgust and detach us from him. It was, it seems, the
intention of Nature, that those rougher and more unamiable emotions,
which drive men from one another, should be less easily and more
rarely communicated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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