interruptions to them in their way, as intruders upon their
business, their gaiety, and mirth: compassion is an advocate within
us in their behalf, to gain the unhappy admittance and access, to
make their case attended to. If it sometimes serves a contrary
purpose, and makes men industriously turn away from the miserable,
these are only instances of abuse and perversion: for the end, for
which the affection was given us, most certainly is not to make us
avoid, but to make us attend to, the objects of it. And if men
would only resolve to allow thus much to it: let it bring before
their view, the view of their mind, the miseries of their fellow-
creatures; let it gain for them that their case be considered; I am
persuaded it would not fail of gaining more, and that very few real
objects of charity would pass unrelieved. Pain and sorrow and
misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind
of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the
distressed. For, to endeavour to get rid of the sorrow of
compassion by turning from the wretched, when yet it is in our power
to relieve them, is as unnatural as to endeavour to get rid of the
pain of hunger by keeping from the sight of food. That we can do
one with greater success than we can the other is no proof that one
is less a violation of nature than the other. Compassion is a call,
a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural
call for food. This affection plainly gives the objects of it an
additional claim to relief and mercy, over and above what our
fellow-creatures in common have to our goodwill. Liberality and
bounty are exceedingly commendable; and a particular distinction in
such a world as this, where men set themselves to contract their
heart, and close it to all interests but their own. It is by no
means to be opposed to mercy, but always accompanies it: the
distinction between them is only that the former leads our thoughts