A Treatise of Human Nature

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BOOK II PART II


I. shall just observe, before I leave the present
subject, that this phaenomenon of the double
sympathy, and its tendency to cause love, may
contribute to the production of the kindness,
which we naturally bear our relations and ac-
quaintance. Custom and relation make us enter
deeply into the sentiments of others; and what-
ever fortune we suppose to attend them, is ren-
dered present to us by the imagination, and op-
erates as if originally our own. We rejoice in
their pleasures, and grieve for their sorrows,
merely from the force of sympathy. Nothing
that concerns them is indifferent to us; and as
this correspondence of sentiments is the natu-
ral attendant of love, it readily produces that
affection.

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