 But why does contemplation of a character without reference to our own interest give us pleasure in the first place? Not because we’re simply equipped with an innate moral sense, but because of the operation of sympathy, which offers a more parsimonious and systematic explanation of the phenomena. For Hume, its mechanism is a kind of analogical association from the effects of a passion to their cause or vice versa, which generates the same passion in the observer (T 576). Grouchy observed that the importance of memory in this process has political implications: the privileged who skip the “school of pain and adversity” will be lacking in compassion (1798: 62). On Hume’s account, once the pleasures and pains of others are communicated to us, we are ourselves pleased in a special way when contemplating those durable character traits that reliably please others. This special kind of pleasure ‘denominates’ the trait as virtuous or vicious: