feign” 
On Tragical Representations. 34t 
ther impulse to the participation of distress, 
when no immediate object of our benevolent 
interposition is before us. But compassion was 
implanted in us with more extensive views, not 
merely that it. might come in aid of our good 
will on pressing occasions, which may justify 
the pain it gives us; but that, by a more regular 
and uniform exercise, it might minister to the” 
sublimest virtue of man, and dispose us, on every 
occasion, to wish and do well to the creature like 
ourselves. 
There is a striking difference in the exercise 
of this sense, as referred to the real distresses of 
human life, and to the fictitious ones of tragedy , 
and this difference is wisely adapted to their re- 
spective uses. When we are summoned to im- 
mediate action, the sympathetic feeling is pain 
unmixed, in order to give power and velocity 
to the benevolent stimulus, “We have no pro- 
pensity, therefore, to such scenes; we do not 
wish them to exist, in order that our compassion 
and benevolence may have a field to action; 
though he who orders, or rather permits them, 
has wisely provided that the calamities of human 
beings shall operate to the moral improvement 
and perfection of their minds. But where the 
distress is merely fictitious, or the representation: 
of what is past; and no kind humane interposi- 
tion is expected from us, but only the cherish- 
