Excerpt from Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiment

Excerpt from Smith's  The Theory of Moral Sentiment

Smith and his Primitive Understanding of Sympathy

In this excerpt, Smith attempts to convey what it means to be sympathetic or empathetic with someone in simple words. He claims that witnessing "pain or sorrow" induces equivalent feelings, or the closest representation possible, in the witness.

Adam Smith

1759

Matthew Zachary

Neither is it those circumstances only, which create pain or sorrow, that call forth our fellow-feeling. Whatever is the passion which arises from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator.

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