ambivalent about Pity, initially casting it in a negative role, before viewing Pity as an emotion that can draw beings together. In The Book of Urizen Pity begins when Los looks on the body of Urizen bound in chains (Urizen 13.50–51). However, Pity furthers the fall, "For pity divides the soul" (13.53), dividing Los and Enitharmon (Enitharmon is named Pity at her birth). Blake maintained that Pity disarmed righteous indignation leading to action; and, railing further against Pity in The Human Abstract, Blake exclaims: "Pity would be no more, / If we did not make somebody Poor" (1–2). J. R. R. Tolkien made pity – that of the hobbits for Gollum – pivotal to the action of The Lord of the Rings: "It was Pity that stayed his hand...the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many". Wilfred Owen prefaced his collection of war poetry with the claim that "My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity" – something C. H. Sisson considered to verge on sentimentality. See also References Bibliography Further reading David Konstan, Pity Transformed. London: Duckworth, 2001. pp. 181. . David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, in his Enquires concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals. (1751) ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed. P.H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975 [1st]) Sec. VI Part II, p. 248, n.1. Stephen Tudor, Compassion and Remorse: Acknowledging the Suffering Other, Leuven, Peeters 2000. Lauren Wispé. The Psychology of Sympathy. Springer, 1991. , . External links Pity Emotions Virtue