"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"
About this Quote
Butler is doing something slyly modern here: he’s defending compassion not as saintly self-denial, but as a net positive for the person who feels it. As an Anglican cleric arguing in an age suspicious of “enthusiasm” and increasingly confident about self-interest, he treats moral psychology like bookkeeping: weigh the sorrow compassion brings against the “many things” that counterbalance it, and you’ll find the ledger tilts toward delight.
The intent is apologetic but not sentimental. Butler anticipates the stock objection: compassion hurts; it pulls you into other people’s misery; therefore it’s irrational, maybe even a weakness. His rebuttal is a quiet repositioning. Compassion is painful, yes, but the pain is neither pure loss nor the whole story. The subtext is that humans aren’t built to maximize comfort; we’re built with social affections that generate their own satisfactions - intimacy, meaning, relief, the felt rightness of acting decently. Compassion “balances” itself because it creates connection and agency: it turns passive witnessing into participation, and participation carries its own kind of pleasure.
Context matters: Butler is writing against Hobbesian pessimism about human motives, the idea that beneath every virtue lies disguised egoism. So he doesn’t deny self-benefit; he reframes it. The delight that “arises” from compassion isn’t proof it’s fake, but evidence it’s natural - a designed feature of moral life, not a glitch. Even the stiff, legalistic phrasing (“no doubt but that”) performs authority: compassion isn’t just admirable; it’s reasonable, almost inevitable, once you stop pretending sorrow is the only emotion in the room.
The intent is apologetic but not sentimental. Butler anticipates the stock objection: compassion hurts; it pulls you into other people’s misery; therefore it’s irrational, maybe even a weakness. His rebuttal is a quiet repositioning. Compassion is painful, yes, but the pain is neither pure loss nor the whole story. The subtext is that humans aren’t built to maximize comfort; we’re built with social affections that generate their own satisfactions - intimacy, meaning, relief, the felt rightness of acting decently. Compassion “balances” itself because it creates connection and agency: it turns passive witnessing into participation, and participation carries its own kind of pleasure.
Context matters: Butler is writing against Hobbesian pessimism about human motives, the idea that beneath every virtue lies disguised egoism. So he doesn’t deny self-benefit; he reframes it. The delight that “arises” from compassion isn’t proof it’s fake, but evidence it’s natural - a designed feature of moral life, not a glitch. Even the stiff, legalistic phrasing (“no doubt but that”) performs authority: compassion isn’t just admirable; it’s reasonable, almost inevitable, once you stop pretending sorrow is the only emotion in the room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Kindness |
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