《道德情操论》（1）论同情

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宋德利


《道德情操论》（1）论同情


Chap. I Of Sympathy

第一章 论同情

1．

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.


一个人的性格中，显然存在某些天性，无论他被认为私心有多重，这些天性也会激励他去关注别人的命运，而且还将别人的，也是他所需要的快乐转赐予他。他因目睹别人快乐而快乐，不过除此之外，不啻一无所获，然而他依旧乐此不疲。同情或怜悯，就是这种天性，亦即这样一种情感：当我们或亲眼目睹，或浮想联翩地设想他人的痛苦时，我们就会感同身受。我们时常因他人之悲而悲，其实这种情况朗如白昼，无需例证；这种情感，与人性中其它所有的原始激情毫无二致，绝不为德高望重、慈悲为怀的谦谦君子所独善，诚然，他们对这种情感的体察可能极其微妙与敏感。因此，即便是为非作歹、罪大恶极的暴徒，及至冥顽不化、违反社会公德的恶棍，也绝非毫无同情之心的冷血动物。

2．

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels. For as to be in pain or distress of any kind excites the most excessive sorrow, so to conceive or to imagine that we are in it, excites some degree of the same emotion, in proportion to the vivacity or dulness of the conception.

我们对于他人的感受缺乏直接体验，只能设身处地加以想象，否则就无法感同身受。如果我们采取事不关己，高高挂起的态度，即使亲兄弟遭受严刑拷打，我们的官能也会麻木不仁，无法感知他的痛苦。可惜的是，无论过去，还是现在，官能的作用只囿于自身，因此无法使我们超脱自我。有鉴于此，我们只能凭借想象，才能对那位兄弟的感觉形成某种概念。我们的官能倾其力而为之的，也只能是向我们描绘彼时彼地我们自己可能有何感受。这只是我们通过自己的，而不是那位兄弟的感觉所形成的印象，而这种印象只是通过想象所产生的复制品而已。通过身临其境的想象，设想自己正在遭受同样的折磨，似乎已经融入他的体内，在某种程度上已变成和他一样的人，因而对他的感受形成一些概念，而这些概念有时与他的感受非常相像，当然相像的程度微乎其微。当他的痛苦被如此这般地传递给我们时，当我们又这般如此地接受他的痛苦时，当我们将他的痛苦变成我们自己的痛苦时，他的痛苦就终于开始影响我们了。于是乎，当我们想到他的感觉时，我们就会战栗发抖。亲身经受痛苦或失望，会激发极度的悲伤，想象经受痛苦或失望，在某种程度上也会激发相同的情感，而这种情感的鲜活度或呆滞度，都与想象形成的概念之鲜活度或呆滞度互成比例。

3．

That this is the source of our fellow-feeling for the misery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the sufferer, that we come either to conceive or to be affected by what he feels, may be demonstrated by many obvious observations, if it should not be thought sufficiently evident of itself. When we see a stroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure, and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of delicate fibres and a weak constitution of body complain, that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent part of their own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the misery of those wretches affects that particular part in themselves more than any other; because that horror arises from conceiving what they themselves would suffer, if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and if that particular part in themselves was actually affected in the same miserable manner. The very force of this conception is sufficient, in their feeble frames, to produce that itching or uneasy sensation complained of. Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason; that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.

这就是我们同情他人痛苦的始末，也就是通过想象与遭受痛苦者换位，对他的感觉加以想象，或受其感染，而所有这些，如果想象得不够鲜明，则都可能凭借明显的观察结果得以展示说明。 当我们看到有人举起手，想朝另外一个人的腿部或手臂打去的时候，或者已经准备去打的时候，我们自己的腿部和手臂就自然而然地抽搐或者回缩；而一旦打到对方，我们则会在某种轻度上感觉打到自己身上，并像被打者那样感到疼痛。当观众凝视一位舞者置身松弛的绳索之上，继而扭动摇摆以求平衡时，或当他们感到如果自己处于舞者的位置也会如此动作时，他们也会身不由己地做出了同样的动作。性格脆弱，或体质羸弱者经常抱怨说，看到乞丐在大街上外露的溃疡或脓疮时，他们自己身体的相应部位也会感到瘙痒或不适。他们对那些可怜人的痛苦加以想象所产生的恐怖，对他们自身那个具体部位产生的影响，要超过任何一位其他人，因为那种恐怖起源于如下的想象，即，如果他们自己真的就是亲眼目睹的那些可怜人，如果他们自身那个具体部位确实以相同的方式遭受痛苦，他们自己将可能经受何种折磨。这种基于想象形成的概念，其力甚巨，足以使他们脆弱的躯体产生为其所抱怨的那种瘙痒感或不适感。即便身体极其强健的人，有时也会注意到：当他们看到别人红肿的眼睛时，经常敏感地感觉到自己的眼睛也会疼痛，而这种情况的产生也起源于相同的原因；眼睛那个部位极其脆弱，即便是体质最强者的眼睛，与体质最弱者身上的其他任何器官相比，也还是脆弱得多。

4．

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. Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who interest us, is as sincere as our grief for their distress, and our fellow-feeling with their misery is not more real than that with their happiness. We enter into their gratitude towards those faithful friends who did not desert them in their difficulties; and we heartily go along with their resentment against those perfidious traitors who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. In every passion of which the mind of man is susceptible, the emotions of the by-stander always correspond to what, by bringing the case home to himself, he imagines should be the sentiments of the sufferer.

身体强健者所注意到的上述两种情况，都决然不是产生痛苦或忧伤，以及激发我们同情心所需的绝无仅有的条件。对于每一位关心他人痛痒的旁观者来说，当他设想自己所倾心关注者的处境时，都会为之动情，无论这种情源于被关注者身上的何种部位，也都是大同小异，趋于雷同。悲剧或浪漫剧中为我们所关注的英雄人物一旦获得释放，我们就会为之喜不自禁，这种喜，与他们的不幸在我们心中所激发的悲，同样真诚不二。不幸引发怜悯，幸福激发热情，二者相比，同样真切，不分伯仲。他们感谢自己那些逆境中不舍不弃的忠实朋友，他们也对那些伤害自己、背弃自己、欺骗自己的背信弃义的叛徒极其愤慨，而我们则亦步亦趋，有样学样，随他们而感恩戴德，因他们而恨之入骨。大凡最煽情的激情，都能使旁观者设身处地去设想一些自认为是受害者必有的情绪，进而做出回应。

5．

Pity and compassion are words appropriated to signify our fellow-feeling with the sorrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the same, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever.

用“怜悯”和“体谅”这两个字眼来表示因他人哀伤所产生的同情，这是再贴切不过的了。“感同身受”这个字眼，其原意也许和上述两者毫无二致，然而现在，用它去饱含激情地抒发同情之心，这未尝不算得体之举。

6．

Upon some occasions sympathy may seem to arise merely from the view of a certain emotion in another person. The passions, upon some occasions, may seem to be transfused from one man to another, instantaneously and antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the person principally concerned. Grief and joy, for example, strongly expressed in the look and gestures of any one, at once affect the spectator with some degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A smiling face is, to every body that sees it, a cheerful object; as a sorrowful countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one.

在某种情况下，之所以会产生怜悯之心，看似仅仅是因为目睹了他人身上流露出的某种情感。这种情感，在某些场合里，看似能从一个人那里传递给另一个人，而这种传递的奇妙之处就在于，这“另一个人”尚未知晓这种情感何以会在对方身上产生，情感传递就闪电般结束了。以悲伤和愉快为例，任何一个人都可以通过眼神和手势来表达这两种情感，而同时也会像痛苦或惬意的情感那样，立即感染旁观者。一张满面春风的阳光之脸，人见人爱，那是因为它令人心旷神怡；一张愁云密布的苦瓜之脸，人见人怕，那是因为它令人心塞肺闷。

7．

This, however, does not hold universally, or with regard to every passion. There are some passions of which the expressions excite no sort of sympathy, but before we are acquainted with what gave occasion to them, serve rather to disgust and provoke us against them. The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exasperate us against himself than against his enemies. As we are unacquainted with his provocation, we cannot bring his case home to ourselves, nor conceive any thing like the passions which it excites. But we plainly see what is the situation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be exposed from so enraged an adversary. We readily, therefore, sympathize with their fear or resentment, and are immediately disposed to take part against the man from whom they appear to be in so much danger.

诚然，这种情况既非放诸四海，皆准无疑，亦非千人一面，毫无例外。有一些感情，在旁观者弄清其产生的来龙去脉之前，表达者在人们心中所激发出来的并非同情，而是厌恶或怨怒。一个怒火中烧的人，其暴躁如雷的表现更像是要激怒我们和他本人作对，而不是与他的敌人作对。因为我们并不了解此人大发雷霆之怒的原因，所以我们既无法将他的情况与我们自己挂钩，也无法想象使此人大为光火的导火索。但是我们却清楚地看到被他发飚者的情况，以及他们可能会从这位凶悍的对头那里遭到何等的狂暴蹂躏。因此我们就自然而然地同情这些人由此产生的恐惧或怨恨，更有甚至，还会立即和他们一起，去反对那个看来要对他们形成严重危害的河东狮吼者。

8．

If the very appearances of grief and joy inspire us with some degree of the like emotions, it is because they suggest to us the general idea of some good or bad fortune that has befallen the person in whom we observe them: and in these passions this is sufficient to have some little influence upon us. The effects of grief and joy terminate in the person who feels those emotions, of which the expressions do not, like those of resentment, suggest to us the idea of any other person for whom we are concerned, and whose interests are opposite to his. The general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates some concern for the person who has met with it, but the general idea of provocation excites no sympathy with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature, it seems, teaches us to be more averse to enter into this passion, and, till informed of its cause, to be disposed rather to take part against it.

如果悲伤和快乐的情感流露，能在某种程度上激发我们产生类似的情感，那是因为这种流露能使我们对感情流露者或好或坏的命运产生一种总体概念：悲伤和快乐这些激情足能使我们产生些许共鸣。悲伤和快乐产生的效果最终只会显现在那个具有相同情感的人身上，但是如果另外有人在情致上与他相左，那么悲伤和欢乐的表达，就和怨怒的表达一样，无论此人如何表达这些情感，我们对他也依然会一无所知。至于命运，无论好坏，只要人们对它产生一个总体概念，它就能使命运的主人赢得外界关注。然而震怒则当别论，无论他给人以何种总体概念，也无法赢得他人的同情。天性似乎在劝诫我们，对于动辄河东狮吼这种激情，不要轻易介入，更有甚者，在知晓狮吼的原因之前，甚至还应该与他人一起，合力对其大加挞伐。

9．

Even our sympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are informed of the cause of either, is always extremely imperfect. General lamentations, which express nothing but the anguish of the sufferer, create rather a curiosity to inquire into his situation, along with some disposition to sympathize with him, than any actual sympathy that is very sensible. The first question which we ask is, What has befallen you? Till this be answered, though we are uneasy both from the vague idea of his misfortune, and still more from torturing ourselves with conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not very considerable.

即便我们体谅他人的悲伤与快乐，但在弄清悲伤与快乐的原因之前，我们的这份体谅之心也总是极不完美的。一般的悲伤，它所表现的只不过是事主的极度痛苦，而它在别人身上所产生的效果，与其说是一种切合实际的同情，毋宁说仅仅激发别人产生渴望了解事主的好奇，以及催生一种同情事主的意向。我们要提出的第一个问题就是，你究竟怎么啦？在这一问题得以解答之前，我们的心情总是忐忑不安，这是因为我们对事主的不幸所产生的印象十分模糊，更有甚者，是因为我们需要对可能发生的情况加以揣测，而这将使我们大吃其苦，然而尽管如此，我们的同情之心，体谅之情，依然无关宏旨。

10．

Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it. We sometimes feel for another, a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether incapable; because, when we put ourselves in his case, that passion arises in our breast from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality. We blush for the impudence and rudeness of another, though he himself appears to have no sense of the impropriety of his own behaviour; because we cannot help feeling with what confusion we ourselves should be covered, had we behaved in so absurd a manner.

因此，同情之心的起源并非是目睹情感本身，而是目睹激发这种情感的环境。我们有时对别人产生同情之心，而这种同情之心，对方本人却似乎全然不知；这是因为这种同情之心并非来源于实际，而是由于我们只是设身处地加以想象，同情之心才油然而生。我们为别人的失礼或粗鲁感到羞愧难当，虽然对方对自己的行为并未感到不得体；这是因为如果我们的行为也是如此荒唐，我们就会情不自禁地感到如此这般地难为情。

11．

Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality exposes mankind, the loss of reason appears, to those who have the least spark of humanity, by far the most dreadful, and they behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper commiseration than any other. But the poor wretch, who is in it, laughs and sings perhaps, and is altogether insensible of his own misery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the sight of such an object, cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator must arise altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is impossible, was at the same time able to regard it with his present reason and judgment.

面临灭顶之灾时，对于人性稍存者来说，丧失理智最为恐怖，他们带着他人难以企及的怜悯之心，见证人类终极的苦难。然而置身其中的那个可怜虫却开怀大笑，或放声高歌，对于自己的悲苦却麻木不仁，了然无知。因此，在目睹实情之际，出于人性所感知的痛苦，就丝毫没能反映出这位蒙受苦难者的真实情感。由此可知，旁观者的同情之心则完全是出自他自己一厢情愿的设想，即，如果他本人置身于同样悲苦的情况之下 - 这也许是不可能的 - ，而且能以现有的理智和判断水准加以思考，他该有何感觉。

12．

What are the pangs of a mother, when she hears the moanings of her infant that during the agony of disease cannot express what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, she joins, to its real helplessness, her own consciousness of that helplessness, and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorder; and out of all these, forms, for her own sorrow, the most complete image of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels only the uneasiness of the present instant, which can never be great. With regard to the future, it is perfectly secure, and in its thoughtlessness and want of foresight, possesses an antidote against fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breast, from which reason and philosophy will, in vain, attempt to defend it, when it grows up to a man.

一位母亲听到自己病魔缠身却有苦难言的宝宝在呻吟时，她该是多么地痛苦不堪。她按照自己的想法，把自己对宝宝独孤无助的猜想，把自己因设想宝宝病情之不可逆料的后果而产生的恐惧，与宝宝实际的独孤无助融为一体，正因为所有这些，她根据自己的悲情，才对痛苦和抑郁产生了最全面的印象。然而，宝宝感觉到的只是眼前一时的不适，没什么大不了的，以后完全能痊愈。儿时的无知与缺乏远见，乃是战胜恐惧与忧伤的万应灵药，至于人类内心的巨大悲痛则当别论，宝宝一旦长大成人，就会抛弃那种万应灵药，试图以理智和哲理去战胜恐惧与忧伤，但结果总是徒劳无功。

13．

We sympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of real importance in their situation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by those circumstances which strike our senses, but can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miserable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the sun; to be shut out from life and conversation; to be laid in the cold grave, a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be obliterated, in a little time, from the affections, and almost from the memory, of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have suffered so dreadful a calamity. The tribute of our fellow-feeling seems doubly due to them now, when they are in danger of being forgot by every body; and, by the vain honours which we pay to their memory, we endeavour, for our own misery, artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their misfortune. That our sympathy can afford them no consolation seems to be an addition to their calamity; and to think that all we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other distress, the regret, the love, and the lamentations of their friends, can yield no comfort to them, serves only to exasperate our sense of their misery. The happiness of the dead, however, most assuredly, is affected by none of these circumstances; nor is it the thought of these things which can ever disturb the profound security of their repose. The idea of that dreary and endless melancholy, which the fancy naturally ascribes to their condition, arises altogether from our joining to the change which has been produced upon them, our own consciousness of that change, from our putting ourselves in their situation, and from our lodging, if I may be allowed to say so, our own living souls in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this case. It is from this very illusion of the imagination, that the foresight of our own dissolution is so terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumstances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miserable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poison to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injustice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the society.

我们甚至同情死者，但却忽视在其所处环境中存在的真正重要的东西，等待他们的那种恐怖的前景即是一例，我们主要是被那些刺激感官的环境所感染，然而对他们的快乐却不能施加任何影响。被剥夺阳光；被摒除于人们的生活及谈资；被埋葬在冰冷的坟墓中，继而腐烂变质成为蛆虫果腹的猎物；在人世间不再为人所思念，旋即从至爱亲朋的慈爱，乃至记忆中被驱离。凡此种种，都被我们视之为至悲至惨，蔑以加矣。诚然，对那些惨遭如此恐怖的灭顶之灾者，我们清醒地认识到，同情之心仅限于此，除此之外，已是爱莫能助。他们处于被每个人都彻底遗忘的危险境地时，我们就会因同情而向他们大唱赞歌。我们已经对死者的苦难形成不无伤感的记忆，而现在我们则会通过向他们的记忆注入虚浮的荣耀，也为表达我们自己的痛苦，人为地、竭尽全力地确保这种痛彻心扉的记忆永不磨灭。然而我们的同情却无法使死者得以慰藉，这对他们既有的灾难来说不啻雪上加霜。我们所做的一切最终都将归于徒劳。想一想吧！为缓解亲朋因死者所产生的抑郁、愧疚、眷恋、悲伤，我们无论如何去做，也丝毫不能使死者获得慰藉，相反却只能加剧我们自己因死者的悲惨遭遇而感觉到的痛苦。然而千真万确，死者的快乐不会受到这些客观环境的影响，因客观环境而产生的主观意念也不会干扰他们安然无虞的长眠。死者要经历万劫不复的苦难，其实这种想法只是一种幻想，它的产生自然要归因于死者所处的环境，而且也完全是因为我们将死者经历的变化与我们本身对那种变化形成的意识紧紧相连，因为我们将自己置身于死者的处境，因为我们将自己鲜活的灵魂，附在死者了无生机的躯体上，如果我可以这样说的话，而后再去想象这种条件该为我们催生出怎样的情感。正是因为如此这般地浮想联翩，我们才一想到死就毛骨悚然，我们才在活着的时候，一想到死后那个无疑不会令我们产生任何痛苦的环境而痛苦不堪。也正是因为如此，人类性格中的一种最重要的天性应运而生，那就是怕死，亦即危害快乐的烈性毒药，然而它却是降服人类不公正之魔的神力克星，它虽伤及个体，但却捍卫和保护社会。