An interesting point that Smith makes in The Theory of Moral Sentiments is regarding people compassion or pity when they see another person in misery. Smith argues that there is a certain disconnection between the specter and the one actually in misery. He writes, "But the poor wretch, who is in it, laughs and sings perhaps, and is altogether insensible of his own misery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the sight of such an object, cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer" (12).
Smith interestingly argues that the misery and the distress of the person actually experiencing the misfortune will never be as great as the specter's. He uses an example of a mother seeing her infant suffer through a disease. The mother is terrified of her own "helplessness, and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorders" (12). However, the infant cannot feel any more misery than the present instant.
Smith argues that the compassion we have as specters must only come out of how we ourselves would feel if we were in that situation of misery. We are completely insensitive to what the person is going through in reality and therefore cannot be truly sensitive to that person.
Smith believes that, however, it is not only misery and sadness that we can experience as specters for another but more importantly joy. He writes, "the sympathy, which my friends express with my joy, might indeed, give me pleasure by enliving that joy: but that which they press with my grief could give me none, if it served only to enliven that grief. Sympathy however, enlivens joy and alleviates grief" (14).
I think Smith claims that, as you put it, "that the misery and the distress of the person actually experiencing the misfortune will never be as great as the specter's" because when"the anguish that humanity feels... cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer," (12) individuals are only left to their own sense and reason to imagine the sorrows of another, and have the tendency to go overboard, which is actually necessary to maintain "perfect human nature" (25). I believe Smith uses the example of mourning to highlight this point, because when someone is dead they cannot feel pain or suffering, yet those around them cannot help but feel the "distress, the regret, the love, and the lamentations of their friends," which serves only to "exasperate their sense of misery" while the "happiness of the dead" remains unaffected (13). We see our own living souls in those unanimated bodies, and "from this very illusion of the imagination" feel powerful negative emotions and suffering in this state; they "make us miserable while we are alive" (13). However Smith argues that this is a characteristic of human nature very important in maintaining justice in society. This kind of sympathy that extends beyond others in our own imaginations restrains "the injustice of mankind" which "guards and protects the society" (13). Without this kind of intense sympathy, perhaps beyond what is necessary, individuals would not be so inclined to accept the emotions and desires of those around them as valid, reasonable, and just.
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