We may, therefore, infer, that benevolence and anger are passions different from love and hatred, and only conjoined with them, by the original constitution of the mind.  As nature has given to the body certain appetites and inclinations, which she encreases, diminishes, or changes according to the situation of the fluids or solids; she has proceeded in the same manner with the mind.  According as we are possessed with love or hatred, the correspondent desire of the happiness or misery of the person, who is the object of these passions, arises in the mind, and varies with each variation of these opposite passions.  This order of things, abstractedly considered, is not necessary.  Love and hatred might have been unattended with any such desires, or their particular connexion might have been entirely reversed.  If nature had so pleased, love might have had the same effect as hatred, and hatred as love.  I see no contradiction in supposing a desire of producing misery annexed to love, and of happiness to hatred.  If the sensation of the passion and desire be opposite, nature coued have altered the sensation without altering the tendency of the desire, and by that means made them compatible with each other.

SECT.  VII OF COMPASSION

But though the desire of the happiness or misery of others, according to the love or hatred we bear them, be an arbitrary and original instinct implanted in our nature, we find it may be counterfeited on many occasions, and may arise from secondary principles.  Pity is a concern for, and malice a joy in the misery of others, without any friendship or enmity to occasion this concern or joy.  We pity even strangers, and such as are perfectly indifferent to us:  And if our ill-will to another proceed from any harm or injury, it is not, properly speaking, malice, but revenge.  But if we examine these affections of pity and malice we shall find them to be secondary ones, arising from original affections, which are varied by some particular turn of thought and imagination.

It will be easy to explain the passion of pity, from the precedent reasoning concerning sympathy.  We have a lively idea of every thing related to us.  All human creatures are related to us by resemblance.  Their persons, therefore, their interests, their passions, their pains and pleasures must strike upon us in a lively manner, and produce an emotion similar to the original one; since a lively idea is easily converted into an impression.  If this be true in general, it must be more so of affliction and sorrow.  These have always a stronger and more lasting influence than any pleasure or enjoyment.