As pain is what we are all naturally averse to, our own sensibility of
it should teach us to commiserate it in others, not wantonly or
unmeritedly to inflict it. But the absurd barbarity of our prejudices
and customs often leads us to transgress this rule.--When we are under
apprehension that we ourselves shall be the sufferers of pain, we
naturally shrink back at the very idea of it: we can then abominate it,
we detest it with horror; we plead hard for mercy; and we feel that _we
can feel_. But when man is out of the question, humanity sleeps, and the
heart grows callous.
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