Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food.
From Joseph Butler
Consequently it will often happen there will be a desire of particular objects, in cases where they cannot be obtained without manifest injury to others.
Every one of our passions and affections hath its natural stint and bound, which may easily be exceeded; whereas our enjoyments can possibly be but in a determinate measure and degree.
For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
Happiness or satisfaction consists only in the enjoyment of those objects which are by nature suited to our several particular appetites, passions, and affections.
However, without considering this connection, there is no doubt but that more good than evil, more delight than sorrow, arises from compassion itself; there being so many things which balance the sorrow of it.
Love of our neighbour, then, has just the same respect to, is no more distant from, self-love, than hatred of our neighbour, or than love or hatred of anything else.
Man may act according to that principle or inclination which for the present happens to be strongest, and yet act in a way disproportionate to, and violate his real proper nature.
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.
People might love themselves with the most entire and unbounded affection, and yet be extremely miserable.
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