David Hume [ Philosophy ]
… rational creatures; and the same disposition, which gives us this propensity, makes us enter deeply into each other's sentiments, and causes like passions and inclinations to run, as it were, by contagion, through the whole club or knot of … thoughts. Not only did Hume believe in man’s social drive, and in the imitation and contagion of manners and sentiments that resulted from human sociability, but the Scottish philosopher also claimed that the civilizing effects of … than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own.’ David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature [1734], ed. by …
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