George Smith Sympathy

First, Smith states it easier for people to sympathize with the passions which emerge from the imagination of other people than with the passions which arise from their bodies because mankind has a difficult time sympathizing with bodily affections, and an easier time sympathizing with the prospective happiness and sorrow which could spring from passions of the imagination. Also passions of the imagination tend not to be odious, they rarely produce bad intentions, and there is always propriety in the passions which accompany the desires of the mind. Therefore, sympathy is more easily attained by sympathizing with passions of the imagination. Smith writes:
A disappointment in love, or ambition, will, upon this account, call forth more sympathy than the greatest bodily evil. Those passions arise altogether from the imagination. The person who …show more content…
Adversity, on this account, necessarily depresses the mind of the sufferer much more below its natural state, than prosperity can elevate him above it. The spectator, therefore, must find it much more difficult to sympathize entirely, and keep perfect time, with his sorrow, than thoroughly to enter into his joy, and must depart much further from his own natural and ordinary temper of mind in the one case than in the other. It is on this account, that though our sympathy with sorrow is often a more pungent sensation than our sympathy with joy, it always falls much short of the violence of what is naturally felt by the person principally concerned.
James Otteson, argues Smith’s concept of mutual sympathy is the force that binds mankind in social and moral life. Otteson writes “our strong desire for sympathy for mutual sympathy of all our sentiments leads to reciprocity and mutual seeking of sympathy, thereby creating an invisible-hand