plain that mere fearlessness (and therefore not the contrary) is one
of the most popular qualifications? This shows that mankind are not
affected towards compassion as fear, but as somewhat totally
different.

Nothing would more expose such accounts as these of the affections
which are favourable and friendly to our fellow-creatures than to
substitute the definitions, which this author, and others who follow
his steps, give of such affections, instead of the words by which
they are commonly expressed. Hobbes, after having laid down that
pity or compassion is only fear for ourselves, goes on to explain
the reason why we pity our friends in distress more than others.
Now substitute the word DEFINITION instead of the word PITY in this
place, and the inquiry will be, why we fear our friends, &c., which
words (since he really does not mean why we are afraid of them) make
no question or sentence at all. So that common language, the words
TO COMPASSIONATE, TO PITY, cannot be accommodated to his account of
compassion. The very joining of the words to PITY OUR FRIENDS is a
direct contradiction to his definition of pity: because those
words, so joined, necessarily express that our friends are the
objects of the passion; whereas his definition of it asserts that
ourselves (or danger to ourselves) are the only objects of it. He
might indeed have avoided this absurdity, by plainly saying what he
is going to account for; namely, why the sight of the innocent, or
of our friends in distress, raises greater fear for ourselves than
the sight of other persons in distress. But had he put the thing
thus plainly, the fact itself would have been doubted; that THE
SIGHT OF OUR FRIENDS IN DISTRESS RAISES IN US GREATER FEAR FOR
OURSELVES THAN THE SIGHT OF OTHERS IN DISTRESS. And in the next
place it would immediately have occurred to every one that the fact