ungenerous spirits, this sympathy goes not beyond a slight
feeling of the imagination, which serves only to excite
sentiments of complacency or ensure, and makes them apply to the
object either honorable or dishonorable appellations. A griping
miser, for instance, praises extremely INDUSTRY and FRUGALITY
even in others, and sets them, in his estimation, above all the
other virtues. He knows the good that results from them, and
feels that species of happiness with a more lively sympathy, than
any other you could represent to him; though perhaps he would not
part with a shilling to make the fortune of the industrious man,
whom he praises so highly.]

Let us suppose a person originally framed so as to have no
manner of concern for his fellow-creatures, but to regard the
happiness and misery of all sensible beings with greater
indifference than even two contiguous shades of the same colour.
Let us suppose, if the prosperity of nations were laid on the one
hand, and their ruin on the other, and he were desired to choose;
that he would stand like the schoolman's ass, irresolute and
undetermined, between equal motives; or rather, like the same ass
between two pieces of wood or marble, without any inclination or
propensity to either side. The consequence, I believe, must be
allowed just, that such a person, being absolutely unconcerned,
either for the public good of a community or the private utility
of others, would look on every quality, however pernicious, or
however beneficial, to society, or to its possessor, with the
same indifference as on the most common and uninteresting object.

But if, instead of this fancied monster, we suppose a MAN to form
a judgement or determination in the case, there is to him a plain