  Compassion was besides the love of God the most important of the particular passions involving benevolence for Butler. He defined compassion as “real sorrow and concern for the misery of our fellow creatures” giving rise to the desire to relieve their distress. The passion of compassion arose from the imaginative ability to substitute another for oneself and thereby to be affected by the distresses of that other with whom one compassionates as towards oneself (Sermon V Note 1). Butler readily admitted that the psychological process that gives rise to compassion included both pleasure in the fact that we were not suffering the distress as well and awareness of our own susceptibility to the ills prompting distress in the object of our compassion. But although the process of giving rise to compassion also gives rise to and even includes self-partial thoughts, “compassion” refers strictly to a “real sorrow and concern for the misery of our fellow creatures” (Sermon V Note 1). To identify it with a self-partial pleasure in the fact that we were not in distress or with the desire to alleviate distress in order to no longer be annoyed by it was to be confused about the meaning of word. Although according to Butler compassion, like any affection, must be governed by reason, the motivation to virtuous actions that compassion gives rise to would not be given rise to by reason alone. Consequently the passion of compassion has a central role in our moral actions. Moreover, the principle of private self-love is not sufficient to serve our welfare without compassion, i.e., compassion is an important ingredient in our well being in addition to being an important moral passion. Its importance for our well being can be seen, according to Butler, in the fact that those who lack compassion, who have “hardness of heart”, tend to have diminished happiness blocking the scope and degree of their happiness.