《道德情操論》（1）論同情

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宋德利


《道德情操論》（1）論同情


Chap. I Of Sympathy

第一章 論同情

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.


一個人的性格中，顯然存在某些天性，無論他被認為私心有多重，這些天性也會激勵他去關注別人的命運，而且還將別人的，也是他所需要的快樂轉賜予他。他因目睹別人快樂而快樂，不過除此之外，不啻一無所獲，然而他依舊樂此不疲。同情或憐憫，就是這種天性，亦即這樣一種情感：當我們或親眼目睹，或浮想聯翩地設想他人的痛苦時，我們就會感同身受。我們時常因他人之悲而悲，其實這種情況朗如白晝，無需例證；這種情感，與人性中其它所有的原始激情毫無二致，絕不為德高望重、慈悲為懷的謙謙君子所獨善，誠然，他們對這種情感的體察可能極其微妙與敏感。因此，即便是為非作歹、罪大惡極的暴徒，及至冥頑不化、違反社會公德的惡棍，也絕非毫無同情之心的冷血動物。

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.

我們對於他人的感受缺乏直接體驗，隻能設身處地加以想象，否則就無法感同身受。如果我們采取事不關己，高高掛起的態度，即使親兄弟遭受嚴刑拷打，我們的官能也會麻木不仁，無法感知他的痛苦。可惜的是，無論過去，還是現在，官能的作用隻囿於自身，因此無法使我們超脫自我。有鑒於此，我們隻能憑借想象，才能對那位兄弟的感覺形成某種概念。我們的官能傾其力而為之的，也隻能是向我們描繪彼時彼地我們自己可能有何感受。這隻是我們通過自己的，而不是那位兄弟的感覺所形成的印象，而這種印象隻是通過想象所產生的複製品而已。通過身臨其境的想象，設想自己正在遭受同樣的折磨，似乎已經融入他的體內，在某種程度上已變成和他一樣的人，因而對他的感受形成一些概念，而這些概念有時與他的感受非常相像，當然相像的程度微乎其微。當他的痛苦被如此這般地傳遞給我們時，當我們又這般如此地接受他的痛苦時，當我們將他的痛苦變成我們自己的痛苦時，他的痛苦就終於開始影響我們了。於是乎，當我們想到他的感覺時，我們就會戰栗發抖。親身經受痛苦或失望，會激發極度的悲傷，想象經受痛苦或失望，在某種程度上也會激發相同的情感，而這種情感的鮮活度或呆滯度，都與想象形成的概念之鮮活度或呆滯度互成比例。

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.

這就是我們同情他人痛苦的始末，也就是通過想象與遭受痛苦者換位，對他的感覺加以想象，或受其感染，而所有這些，如果想象得不夠鮮明，則都可能憑借明顯的觀察結果得以展示說明。 當我們看到有人舉起手，想朝另外一個人的腿部或手臂打去的時候，或者已經準備去打的時候，我們自己的腿部和手臂就自然而然地抽搐或者回縮；而一旦打到對方，我們則會在某種輕度上感覺打到自己身上，並像被打者那樣感到疼痛。當觀眾凝視一位舞者置身鬆弛的繩索之上，繼而扭動搖擺以求平衡時，或當他們感到如果自己處於舞者的位置也會如此動作時，他們也會身不由己地做出了同樣的動作。性格脆弱，或體質羸弱者經常抱怨說，看到乞丐在大街上外露的潰瘍或膿瘡時，他們自己身體的相應部位也會感到瘙癢或不適。他們對那些可憐人的痛苦加以想象所產生的恐怖，對他們自身那個具體部位產生的影響，要超過任何一位其他人，因為那種恐怖起源於如下的想象，即，如果他們自己真的就是親眼目睹的那些可憐人，如果他們自身那個具體部位確實以相同的方式遭受痛苦，他們自己將可能經受何種折磨。這種基於想象形成的概念，其力甚巨，足以使他們脆弱的軀體產生為其所抱怨的那種瘙癢感或不適感。即便身體極其強健的人，有時也會注意到：當他們看到別人紅腫的眼睛時，經常敏感地感覺到自己的眼睛也會疼痛，而這種情況的產生也起源於相同的原因；眼睛那個部位極其脆弱，即便是體質最強者的眼睛，與體質最弱者身上的其他任何器官相比，也還是脆弱得多。

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.

身體強健者所注意到的上述兩種情況，都決然不是產生痛苦或憂傷，以及激發我們同情心所需的絕無僅有的條件。對於每一位關心他人痛癢的旁觀者來說，當他設想自己所傾心關注者的處境時，都會為之動情，無論這種情源於被關注者身上的何種部位，也都是大同小異，趨於雷同。悲劇或浪漫劇中為我們所關注的英雄人物一旦獲得釋放，我們就會為之喜不自禁，這種喜，與他們的不幸在我們心中所激發的悲，同樣真誠不二。不幸引發憐憫，幸福激發熱情，二者相比，同樣真切，不分伯仲。他們感謝自己那些逆境中不舍不棄的忠實朋友，他們也對那些傷害自己、背棄自己、欺騙自己的背信棄義的叛徒極其憤慨，而我們則亦步亦趨，有樣學樣，隨他們而感恩戴德，因他們而恨之入骨。大凡最煽情的激情，都能使旁觀者設身處地去設想一些自認為是受害者必有的情緒，進而做出回應。

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“憐憫”和“體諒”這兩個字眼來表示因他人哀傷所產生的同情，這是再貼切不過的了。“感同身受”這個字眼，其原意也許和上述兩者毫無二致，然而現在，用它去飽含激情地抒發同情之心，這未嚐不算得體之舉。

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.

在某種情況下，之所以會產生憐憫之心，看似僅僅是因為目睹了他人身上流露出的某種情感。這種情感，在某些場合裏，看似能從一個人那裏傳遞給另一個人，而這種傳遞的奇妙之處就在於，這“另一個人”尚未知曉這種情感何以會在對方身上產生，情感傳遞就閃電般結束了。以悲傷和愉快為例，任何一個人都可以通過眼神和手勢來表達這兩種情感，而同時也會像痛苦或愜意的情感那樣，立即感染旁觀者。一張滿麵春風的陽光之臉，人見人愛，那是因為它令人心曠神怡；一張愁雲密布的苦瓜之臉，人見人怕，那是因為它令人心塞肺悶。

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.

誠然，這種情況既非放諸四海，皆準無疑，亦非千人一麵，毫無例外。有一些感情，在旁觀者弄清其產生的來龍去脈之前，表達者在人們心中所激發出來的並非同情，而是厭惡或怨怒。一個怒火中燒的人，其暴躁如雷的表現更像是要激怒我們和他本人作對，而不是與他的敵人作對。因為我們並不了解此人大發雷霆之怒的原因，所以我們既無法將他的情況與我們自己掛鉤，也無法想象使此人大為光火的導火索。但是我們卻清楚地看到被他發飆者的情況，以及他們可能會從這位凶悍的對頭那裏遭到何等的狂暴蹂躪。因此我們就自然而然地同情這些人由此產生的恐懼或怨恨，更有甚至，還會立即和他們一起，去反對那個看來要對他們形成嚴重危害的河東獅吼者。

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.

如果悲傷和快樂的情感流露，能在某種程度上激發我們產生類似的情感，那是因為這種流露能使我們對感情流露者或好或壞的命運產生一種總體概念：悲傷和快樂這些激情足能使我們產生些許共鳴。悲傷和快樂產生的效果最終隻會顯現在那個具有相同情感的人身上，但是如果另外有人在情致上與他相左，那麽悲傷和歡樂的表達，就和怨怒的表達一樣，無論此人如何表達這些情感，我們對他也依然會一無所知。至於命運，無論好壞，隻要人們對它產生一個總體概念，它就能使命運的主人贏得外界關注。然而震怒則當別論，無論他給人以何種總體概念，也無法贏得他人的同情。天性似乎在勸誡我們，對於動輒河東獅吼這種激情，不要輕易介入，更有甚者，在知曉獅吼的原因之前，甚至還應該與他人一起，合力對其大加撻伐。

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.

即便我們體諒他人的悲傷與快樂，但在弄清悲傷與快樂的原因之前，我們的這份體諒之心也總是極不完美的。一般的悲傷，它所表現的隻不過是事主的極度痛苦，而它在別人身上所產生的效果，與其說是一種切合實際的同情，毋寧說僅僅激發別人產生渴望了解事主的好奇，以及催生一種同情事主的意向。我們要提出的第一個問題就是，你究竟怎麽啦？在這一問題得以解答之前，我們的心情總是忐忑不安，這是因為我們對事主的不幸所產生的印象十分模糊，更有甚者，是因為我們需要對可能發生的情況加以揣測，而這將使我們大吃其苦，然而盡管如此，我們的同情之心，體諒之情，依然無關宏旨。

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，同情之心的起源並非是目睹情感本身，而是目睹激發這種情感的環境。我們有時對別人產生同情之心，而這種同情之心，對方本人卻似乎全然不知；這是因為這種同情之心並非來源於實際，而是由於我們隻是設身處地加以想象，同情之心才油然而生。我們為別人的失禮或粗魯感到羞愧難當，雖然對方對自己的行為並未感到不得體；這是因為如果我們的行為也是如此荒唐，我們就會情不自禁地感到如此這般地難為情。

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.

麵臨滅頂之災時，對於人性稍存者來說，喪失理智最為恐怖，他們帶著他人難以企及的憐憫之心，見證人類終極的苦難。然而置身其中的那個可憐蟲卻開懷大笑，或放聲高歌，對於自己的悲苦卻麻木不仁，了然無知。因此，在目睹實情之際，出於人性所感知的痛苦，就絲毫沒能反映出這位蒙受苦難者的真實情感。由此可知，旁觀者的同情之心則完全是出自他自己一廂情願的設想，即，如果他本人置身於同樣悲苦的情況之下 - 這也許是不可能的 - ，而且能以現有的理智和判斷水準加以思考，他該有何感覺。

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.

一位母親聽到自己病魔纏身卻有苦難言的寶寶在呻吟時，她該是多麽地痛苦不堪。她按照自己的想法，把自己對寶寶獨孤無助的猜想，把自己因設想寶寶病情之不可逆料的後果而產生的恐懼，與寶寶實際的獨孤無助融為一體，正因為所有這些，她根據自己的悲情，才對痛苦和抑鬱產生了最全麵的印象。然而，寶寶感覺到的隻是眼前一時的不適，沒什麽大不了的，以後完全能痊愈。兒時的無知與缺乏遠見，乃是戰勝恐懼與憂傷的萬應靈藥，至於人類內心的巨大悲痛則當別論，寶寶一旦長大成人，就會拋棄那種萬應靈藥，試圖以理智和哲理去戰勝恐懼與憂傷，但結果總是徒勞無功。

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.

我們甚至同情死者，但卻忽視在其所處環境中存在的真正重要的東西，等待他們的那種恐怖的前景即是一例，我們主要是被那些刺激感官的環境所感染，然而對他們的快樂卻不能施加任何影響。被剝奪陽光；被摒除於人們的生活及談資；被埋葬在冰冷的墳墓中，繼而腐爛變質成為蛆蟲果腹的獵物；在人世間不再為人所思念，旋即從至愛親朋的慈愛，乃至記憶中被驅離。凡此種種，都被我們視之為至悲至慘，蔑以加矣。誠然，對那些慘遭如此恐怖的滅頂之災者，我們清醒地認識到，同情之心僅限於此，除此之外，已是愛莫能助。他們處於被每個人都徹底遺忘的危險境地時，我們就會因同情而向他們大唱讚歌。我們已經對死者的苦難形成不無傷感的記憶，而現在我們則會通過向他們的記憶注入虛浮的榮耀，也為表達我們自己的痛苦，人為地、竭盡全力地確保這種痛徹心扉的記憶永不磨滅。然而我們的同情卻無法使死者得以慰藉，這對他們既有的災難來說不啻雪上加霜。我們所做的一切最終都將歸於徒勞。想一想吧！為緩解親朋因死者所產生的抑鬱、愧疚、眷戀、悲傷，我們無論如何去做，也絲毫不能使死者獲得慰藉，相反卻隻能加劇我們自己因死者的悲慘遭遇而感覺到的痛苦。然而千真萬確，死者的快樂不會受到這些客觀環境的影響，因客觀環境而產生的主觀意念也不會幹擾他們安然無虞的長眠。死者要經曆萬劫不複的苦難，其實這種想法隻是一種幻想，它的產生自然要歸因於死者所處的環境，而且也完全是因為我們將死者經曆的變化與我們本身對那種變化形成的意識緊緊相連，因為我們將自己置身於死者的處境，因為我們將自己鮮活的靈魂，附在死者了無生機的軀體上，如果我可以這樣說的話，而後再去想象這種條件該為我們催生出怎樣的情感。正是因為如此這般地浮想聯翩，我們才一想到死就毛骨悚然，我們才在活著的時候，一想到死後那個無疑不會令我們產生任何痛苦的環境而痛苦不堪。也正是因為如此，人類性格中的一種最重要的天性應運而生，那就是怕死，亦即危害快樂的烈性毒藥，然而它卻是降服人類不公正之魔的神力克星，它雖傷及個體，但卻捍衛和保護社會。