[This is part of my steady series of reading Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, one page at a time.]
What is sympathy? The source is our ability to conceive or imagine the same emotion as someone else. We flinch when we see someone else get hurt. One itches, another itches. One yawns, another yawn. “Grief and joy affect the spectator with … painful or agreeable emotion.” Smith also calls this “fellow-feeling.”
Even stories: “Our joy for the deliverance of those heroes of tragedy or romance who interest us” – the bystander imagines the sentiments of the sufferer.
Smith distinguishes between pity, compassion and sympathy. Pity and compassion are concerned with suffering, while sympathy is a more general term for all “fellow-feeling.” “Sympathy” is Smith’s word that is Girard would say represents the mimetic nature of the human mind.
The Divine Latitude 
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