The psychological re-creation of suffering—the essential vehicle of compassion and tenderness—fails easily if the sufferer is not a namable or visible individual but only a totality, which has no subjective states of mind, so to speak. It has been noted that English communal life has been characterized, throughout its history, by extraordinary justice toward persons and by equally great injustice toward groups. In view of the strong feeling for individual rights, it is only this second psychological peculiarity which accounts for the manner in which Dissenters, Jews, Irishmen, Hindus, and, in earlier periods, Scotchmen, have been treated.

XREF: Connects to the identifiable-victim effect in behavioral economics and to Adam Smith's distinction between compassion for individuals versus aggregates.

XREF: Connects to moral psychology and empathy research on identifiable victims versus statistical lives.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 344