ESSAY ON THE M011AL EFFECTS OF FICTION. 477 



from whom I am always unwilling to dissent, especially on the mixed 

 questions of taste and morals, which he generally treats with uncommon 

 success. He admits that fiction cultivates the moral taste, the advantage 

 ascribed to it by Lord Bacon ; but he seems to deny (though with some 

 fluctuation) that it cultivates sympathy the advantage for which I have 

 ventured to contend. The sum of his objections is, that every repetition 

 of a melancholy scene blunts sensibility ; that this is not balanced, as in 

 real life, by strengthening the active habit ; and that a custom of con- 

 templating the elegant distresses of fiction, makes the mind shrink from 

 the homely, and often disgusting, miseries of the world. The last ob- 

 jection has a certain degree of truth. A mind accustomed to compas- 

 sionate distress only when divested of disgusting circumstances, will 

 doubtless not be so ready to pity haggard and loathsome poverty, as 

 those who have been long habituated to contemplate that sort of misery. 

 But the true question is, whether such a mind will not be more disposed 

 to pity, in such circumstances, than one who has never had compassion 

 excited before. 



It deserves particular consideration, that distress is never presented 

 in fiction, but where it is naturally followed by pity, which it is the ob- 

 ject of the fiction to inspire. It must be, and it ought to be, quite other- 

 wise in real life. The physician is immediately roused by the sight of 

 suffering, to consider the means of relief; the magistrate connects the 

 sufferings of the criminal with the advantage of society ; the angry man 

 feels a gratification in the sufferings of his enemy. These states of mind 

 are natural ; some of them useful, and even necessary. The case of the 

 physician is that of every man constantly engaged in the practice of 

 benevolence ; but they are all examples where pain is dissociated from 

 the sufferings of others, and where real misery produces sentiments dif- 

 ferent from pity the most generally useful of all human feelings. 



From the larger proposition I differ also that " an habitual attention 

 to scenes of fictitious distress is not merely useless to the character, but 

 positively hurtful." Impressions are weakened by repetition ; associations 

 between two ideas, or between two feelings, or between an idea and a 

 feeling, are strengthened by repetition ; and the force of such associations 

 will be directly in proportion to the number of times that the ideas or 

 feelings have co-existed, or immediately succeeded each other. This 

 theory is applicable to every operation of the mind, but the mere passive 

 receiving of impressions ; it is obviously applicable to all the passions, 

 and is, indeed, the law on which their growth depends. Take the in- 

 stance of avarice. There is in avarice an association between the idea 

 of money and the feeling of pleasure. It is perfectly clear, that the 

 oftener this idea and this feeling have been associated, the stronger is the 

 power of the idea to call up the feeling. It would be most extravagant 

 indeed to suppose, that the repetition of fits of anger did not make a man 

 more irascible, in a manner so independent of outward acts, that men 

 often become more passionate from the painful necessity of concealing 

 all its outward marks. If the contemplation of pathetic scenes weakens 

 pity, why should not the contemplation of excellence weaken the love of 

 virtue ? 



Then, though each single impression is, no doubt, weakened by repeti- 

 tion, yet this may be more than counterbalanced by new impressions, 



M. M. No. 11. 3 P 



