ABSTRACT
One has to admit that there is something about other people’s grief that naturally excites curiosity. This human characteristic causes great debate during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often revealing profound doubt about the possibility of natural goodness. Depending upon one’s perspective, this natural interest in others’ grief may reveal a heartwarming fact about human nature or quite the reverse. Smith, Rousseau, and others during the eighteenth century interpreted curiosity about others’ suffering (our “brother on the rack”) as a natural spring of human sympathy.
