DEVELOPMENT OF SYMPATHY. 27 



facilitates the development of sympathy. But there are 

 negative and positive checks upon this development 

 negative, because sympathy cannot advance faster than 

 intelligence advances, since it presupposes the power of 

 interpreting the natural language of the various feelings, 

 and of mentally representing those feelings ; positive, 

 because the immediate needs of self-preservation are often 

 at variance with its promptings, as, for example, during 

 the predatory stages of human progress. For explanations 

 of the second process, I must refer to &quot; The Principles of 

 Psychology &quot; ( 202, first edition, and 215, second edition) 

 and to &quot; Social Statics,&quot; Part II., Chapter V. 1 Asking that 

 in default of space these explanations may be taken for 

 granted, let me here point ont in what sense even sym 

 pathy, and the sentiments that result from it, are due 

 to experiences of utility. If we suppose all thought of 

 rewards or punishments, immediate or remote, to be left 

 out of consideration, it is clear that any one who hesitates 

 to inflict a pain because of the vivid representation of that 

 pain which rises in his consciousness, is restrained, not by 

 any sense of obligation or by any formulated doctrine of 

 utility, but by the painful association established in him. 

 And it is clear that if, after repeated experiences of the 

 moral discomfort he has felt from witnessing the unhappi- 

 ness indirectly caused by some of his acts, he is led to check 

 himself when again tempted to those acts, the restraint is 

 of like nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts : 

 repetitions of kind deeds, and experiences of the sympa 

 thetic gratifications that follow, tend continually to make 

 stronger the association between such deeds and feelings 

 of happiness. 



1 I may add that in &quot; Social Statics,&quot; Chapter XXX., 1 have indicated, in 

 a general way, the causes of the development of sympathy and the restraints 

 upon its development confining the discussion, however, to the case of the 

 human race, my subject limiting me to that. The accompanying teleology I 

 now disclaim. 



