external signs of an affection, according to Hume’s doctrine of
inference, can only mean that certain impressions of the other
person’s words and gestures call up the ideas of their ‘usual
attendants’; which, again, must mean either that they convey the
belief in certain exciting circumstances experienced by the other
man, and the expectation of certain acts to follow upon his words
and gestures; or else that they suggest to the spectator the memory
of certain like manifestations on his own part and through these of
the emotion which in his own case was their antecedent. Either way,
the spectator’s idea of the other person’s affection is in no sense a
copy of it, or that affection in a fainter form. If it is an idea of
an impression _of reflection_ at all, it is of such an impression as
experienced by the spectator himself, and determined, as Hume admits,
by his consciousness of himself; nor could any conveyance of vivacity
to the idea make it other than that impression. How it should
become to the spectator consciously at once another’s impression
and his own, remains unexplained. Hume only seems to explain it by
means of the equivocation lurking in the phrase, ‘idea of another’s
affection.’ The reader, not reflecting that, according to the copying
theory, so far as the idea is a copy of anything _in the other_, it
can only be a copy of certain ‘external signs, &c.,’ and so far as
it is a copy _of an affection_, only of an affection experienced by
the man who has the idea, thinks of it as being to the spectator
the other’s affection minus a certain amount of vivacity--the
restoration of which will render it an impression at once his own
and the other’s. It can in truth only be so in virtue _(a)_ of an
interpretation of words and gestures, as related to a person, which
no suggestion by impressions of their usual attendants can account
for, and in virtue _(b)_ of there being such a conceived identity,
or unity in difference, between the spectator’s own person and the
person of the other that the same impression, in being determined by
his consciousness of himself, is determined also by his consciousness
of the other as an ‘alter ego.’ Thus sympathy, according to Hume’s
account of it, so soon as that account is rationalized, is found
to involve the determination of pleasure and pain, not merely by
self-consciousness, but by a self-consciousness which is also
self-identification with another. If self-consciousness cannot in
any of its functions be reduced to an impression or succession of
impressions, least of all can it in this. On the other hand, if it
is only through its constitutive action, its reflection of itself,
upon successive impressions of sense that these become the permanent
objects which we know, we can understand how by a like action on
certain impressions of reflection, certain emotions and desires, it
constitutes those objects of interest which we love as ourselves.
Ambiguity in his account of benevolence: It is a desire and therefore
has pleasure for its object. What pleasure?
41. Pride, love, and sympathy, then, are the motives which Hume
must have granted him, if his moral theory is to march. Sympathy is
not only necessary to his explanation of that most important form
of pride which is the motive to a man in maintaining a character
with his neighbours when ‘nothing is to be gained by it’--nothing,
that is, beyond the immediate pleasure it gives--and of all forms
of ‘love,’ except those of which the exciting cause lies in the
pleasures of beauty and sexual appetite: he finds in it also the
ground of benevolence. Where he first treats of benevolence, indeed,
this does not appear. Unlike pride and humility, we are told, which
‘are pure emotions of the soul, unattended with any desire, and
not immediately exciting us to action, love and hatred are not
completed within themselves ... Love is always followed by a desire
of the happiness of the person beloved, and an aversion to his
misery; as hatred produces a desire of the misery, and an aversion
to the happiness, of the person hated.’ [1] This actual sequence of
‘benevolence’ and ‘anger’ severally upon love and hatred is due, it
appears, to ‘an original constitution of the mind’ which cannot be
further accounted for. That benevolence is no essential part of love
is clear from the fact that the latter passion ‘may express itself
in a hundred ways, and may subsist a considerable time, without
our reflecting on the happiness of its object.’ Doubtless, when we
do reflect on it, we desire the happiness; but, ‘if nature had so
pleased, love might have been unattended with any such desire.’ [2]
So far, the view given tallies with what we have already quoted from
the summary account of the direct and indirect passions, where the
‘desire of punishment to our enemies and happiness to our friends’
is expressly left outside the general theory of the passions as a
‘natural impulse wholly unaccountable,’ a ‘direct passion’ which yet
does not proceed from pleasure.’ With his instinct for consistency,
however, Hume could scarcely help seeking to assimilate this alien
element to his definition of desire as universally for pleasure;
and accordingly, while the above view of benevolence is never in so
many words given up, an essentially different one appears a little
further on, which by help of the doctrine of sympathy at once makes
the connection of benevolence with love more accountable, and brings
it under the general definition of desire. ‘Benevolence,’ we are
there told, ‘is an original pleasure arising from the pleasure of
the person beloved, and a pain proceeding from his pain, from which
correspondence of impressions there arises a subsequent desire of his
pleasure and aversion to his pain.’ [3]
[1] Vol. II., p. 153. [Book II., part II., sec. VI.]
[2] Vol. II., p. 154. [Book II., part II., sec. VI.]
[3] Vol. II., p. 170. [Book II., part II., sec. IX.] Compare Vol.
II., ‘Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,’ Appendix II.,
_note_ 3, where ‘general benevolence,’ also called ‘humanity,’ is
identified with ‘sympathy.’ ‘Benevolence is naturally divided into
two kinds, the _general_ and the _particular_. The first is, where we
have no friendship, or connection, or esteem for the person, but feel
only a general sympathy with him, or a compassion for his pains, and
a congratulation with his pleasures,’ &c. &c.
Pleasure of sympathy with the pleasure of another.
42. Now, strictly construed, this passage seems to efface the one
clear distinction of benevolence that had been previously insisted
on--that it is a desire, namely, as opposed to a pure emotion. If
benevolence _is_ an ‘original pleasure arising from the pleasure of
the person beloved,’ it is identical with love, so far as sympathy
is an exciting cause of love, instead of being distinguished from it
as desire from emotion. We must suppose, however, that the sentence
was carelessly put together, and that Hume did not really mean to
identify benevolence with the pleasure spoken of in the former part
of it (for which his proper term is simply sympathy), but with the
desire for that pleasure, spoken of in the latter part. In that case
we find that benevolence forms no exception to the general definition
of desire. It is desire for one’s own pleasure, but for a pleasure
received through the communication by sympathy of the pleasure of
another. In like manner, the sequence of benevolence upon love,
instead of being an unaccountable ‘disposition of nature,’ would seem
explicable, as merely the ordinary sequence upon a pleasant emotion
of a desire for its renewal. Though it be not strictly the pleasant
emotion of love, but that of sympathy, for which benevolence is the
desire, yet if sympathy is necessary to the excitement of love,
it will equally follow that benevolence attends on love. Pleasure
sympathised with, we may suppose, first excites the secondary emotion
of love, and afterwards, when reflected on, that desire for its
continuance or renewal, which is benevolence. That love ‘should
express itself in a hundred ways, and subsist a considerable time’
without any consciousness of benevolence, will merely be the natural
relation of emotion to desire. When a pleasure is in full enjoyment,
it cannot be so reflected on as to excite desire; and thus, if
benevolence is desire for that pleasure in the pleasure of another,
which is an exciting cause of love, the latter emotion must naturally
subsist and express itself for some time before it reaches the stage
in which reflection on its cause, and with it benevolent desire,
ensues.
All ‘passions’ equally interested or disinterested: Confusion arises
from use of ‘passion’ alike for desire and emotion. Of this Hume
avails himself in his account of active pity.
43. This _rationale_, however, of the relation between love and
benevolence is not explicitly given by Hume himself. He nowhere
expressly withdraws the exception, made in favour of benevolence, to
the rule that all desire is for pleasure--an exception which, once
admitted, undermines his whole system--or tells us in so many words
that benevolence is desire for pleasure to oneself in the pleasure
of another. In an important note to the Essays, [1] indeed, he
distinctly puts benevolence on the same footing with such desires
as avarice or ambition. ‘A man is no more interested when he seeks
his own glory, than when the happiness of his friend is the object
of his wishes; nor is he any more disinterested when he sacrifices
his own ease and quiet to public good, than when he labours for the
gratification of avarice or ambition.’ ... ‘Though the satisfaction
of these latter passions gives us enjoyment, yet the prospect of this
enjoyment is not the cause of the passion, but, on the contrary, the
passion is antecedent to the enjoyment, and without the former the
latter could not possibly exist.’ In other words, if ‘passion’ means
_desire_--and, as applied to _emotion_, the designation ‘interested’
or ‘disinterested’ has no meaning--every passion is equally
disinterested in the sense of presupposing an ‘enjoyment’ a pleasant
emotion, antecedent to that which consists in its satisfaction; but
at the same time equally interested in the sense of being a desire
for such enjoyment. Whether from a wish to find acceptance, however,
or because forms of man’s good-will to man forced themselves on
his notice which forbade the consistent development of his theory,
Hume is always much more explicit about the disinterestedness of
benevolence in the former sense than about its interestedness in
the latter. [2] Accordingly he does not avail himself of such an
explanation of its relation to love as that above indicated, which
by avowedly reducing benevolence to a desire for pleasure, while it
simplified his system, might have revolted the ‘common sense’ even of
the eighteenth century. He prefers--as his manner is, when he comes
upon a question which he cannot face--to fall back on a ‘disposition
of nature’ as the ground of the ‘conjunction’ of benevolence with
love. There is a form of benevolence, however, which would seem as
little explicable by such natural conjunction as by reduction to a
desire for sympathetic pleasure. How is it that active good-will is
shown towards those whom, according to Hume’s theory of love, it
should be impossible to love--towards those with whom intercourse
is impossible, or from whom, if intercourse is possible, we can
derive no such pleasure as is supposed necessary to excite that
pleasant emotion, but rather such pain, in sympathy with their pain,
as according to the theory should excite hatred? To this question
Hume in effect finds an answer in the simple device of using the
same terms, ‘pity’ and ‘compassion,’ alike for the painful _emotion_
produced by the spectacle of another’s pain and for ‘desire for the
happiness of another and aversion to his misery.’ [3] According
to the latter account of it, pity is already ‘the same desire’
as benevolence, though ‘proceeding from a different principle,’
and thus has a resemblance to the love with which benevolence is
conjoined--a ‘resemblance not of feeling or sentiment but of tendency
or direction.’ [4] Hence, whereas ‘pity’ in the former sense would
make us hate those whose pain gives us pain, by understanding it in
the latter sense we can explain how it leads us to love them, on the
principle that one resembling passion excites another.
[1] ‘Inquiry concerning Human Understanding,’ note to sec. 1. In the
editions after the second, this note was omitted.
[2] Attention should be called to a passage at the end of the account
of ‘self-love’ in the Essays, where he seems to revert to the view of
benevolence as a desire not _originally_ produced by pleasure, but
productive of it, and thus passing into a secondary stage in which
it is combined with desire for pleasure. He suggests tentatively
that ‘from the original frame of our temper we may feel a desire
for another’s happiness or good, which, by means of that affection,
becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued from the combined
motives of benevolence and self-enjoyment.’ The passage might have
been written by Butler. (Vol. IV., ‘Inquiry concerning Principles of
Morals,’ Appendix II.)
[3] Book II., part 2, secs. 7 and 9. Within a few lines of each
other will be found the statements _(a)_ that ‘pity is an uneasiness
arising from the misery of others,’ and _(b)_ that ‘pity is desire
for the happiness of another,’ &c.
[4] ‘Dissertation on the Passions’ (in the Essays), sec. 3, sub-sec.
5.
Explanation of apparent conflict between reason and passion.
44. We are now in a position to review the possible motives of human
action according to Hume. Reason, constituting no objects, affords no
motives. ‘It is only the slave of the passions, and can never pretend
to any other office than to serve and obey them.’ [1] To any logical
thinker who accepted Locke’s doctrine of reason, as having no other
function but to ‘lay in order intermediate ideas,’ this followed of
necessity. It is the clearness with which Hume points out that, as it
cannot move, so neither can it restrain, action, that in this regard
chiefly distinguishes him from Locke. The check to any passion, he
points out, can only proceed from some counter-motive, and such
a motive reason, ‘having no original influence,’ cannot give.
Strictly speaking, then, a passion can only be called unreasonable,
as accompanied by some false judgment, which on its part must
consist in ‘disagreement of ideas, considered as copies, with those
objects which they represent;’ and ‘even then it is not the passion,
properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment.’ It is
nothing against reason--not, as Locke had inadvertently said, a
wrong judgment--‘to prefer my own acknowledged lesser good to my
greater.’ The only unreasonableness would lie in supposing that ‘my
own acknowledged lesser good,’ being preferred, could be attained by
means that would not really lead to it. Hence ‘we speak not strictly
when we talk of the combat of reason and passion.’ They can in truth
never oppose each other. The supposition. that they do so arises
from a confusion between ‘calm passions’ and reason--a confusion
founded on the fact that the former ‘produce little emotion in the
mind, while the operation of reason produces none at all.’ [2] Calm
passions, undoubtedly, do often conflict with the violent ones and
even prevail over them, and thus, as the violent passion causes most
uneasiness, it is untrue to say with Locke [3] that it is the most
pressing uneasiness which always determines action. The calmness of a
passion is not to be confounded with weakness, nor its violence with
strength. A desire may be calm either because its object is remote,
or because it is customary. In the former case, it is true, the
desire is likely to be relatively weak; but in the latter case, the
calmer the desire, the greater is likely to be its strength, since
the repetition of a desire has the twofold effect, on the one hand
of diminishing the ‘sensible emotion’ that accompanies it, on the
other hand of ‘bestowing a facility in the performance of the action’
corresponding to the desire, which in turn creates a new inclination
or tendency that combines with the original desire. [4]
[1] Vol. II., p. 195. [Book II., part III., sec. III.]
[2] Vol. II., pp. 195, 196. [Book II., part III., sec. III.]
[3] Above, sec. 3.
[4] Vol. II. pp. 198-200. [Book II., part III., sec. IV.] It will be
found that here Hume might have stated his case much more succinctly
by avoiding the equivocal use of ‘passion’ at once for ‘desire’ and
‘emotion.’ When a ‘passion’ is designated as ‘calm’ or ‘violent,’
‘passion’ means emotion. When the terms ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ are
applied to it, it means ‘desire.’ Since of the strength of any
desire there is in truth no test but the resulting action, and habit
facilitates action, if we will persist in asking the idle question
about the relative strength of desires, we must suppose that the most
habitual is the strongest.
A ‘reasonable’ desire means one that excites little emotion:
Enumeration of possible motives.
45. The distinction, then, between ‘reasonable’ and ‘unreasonable’
desires--and it is only _desires_ that can be referred to when will,
or the determination to action, is in question--in the only sense
in which Hume can admit it, is a distinction not of objects but
of our situation in regard to them. The object of desire in every
case--whether near or remote, whether either by its novelty or by
its contrariety to other passions it excites more or less ‘sensible
emotion’--is still ‘good,’ _i.e._ pleasure. The greater the pleasure
in prospect, the stronger the desire. [1] The only proper question,
then, according to Hume, as to the pleasure which in any particular
case is an object of desire will be whether it is _(a)_ an immediate
impression of sense, or _(b)_ a pleasure of pride, or _(c)_ one
of sympathy. Under the first head, apparently, he would include
pleasures incidental to the satisfaction of appetite, and pleasures
corresponding to the several senses--not only the smells and tastes
we call ‘sweet,’ but the sights and sounds we call ‘beautiful.’ [2]
Pleasures of this sort, we must suppose, are the _ultimate_ ‘exciting
causes’ [3] of all those secondary ones, which are distinguished
from their ‘exciting causes’ as determined by the ideas either of
self or of another thinking person--the pleasures, namely, of pride
and sympathy. Sympathetic pleasure, again, will be of two kinds,
according as the pleasure in the pleasure of another does or does
not excite the further pleasure of love for the other person. If the
object desired is none of these pleasures, nor the means to them, it
only remains for the follower of Hume to suppose that it is ‘pleasure
in general’--the object of ‘self love.’
[1] Cf p. 198. [Book II., part III., sec. IV.] ‘The same good, when
near, will cause a violent passion, which, when remote, produces
only a calm one.’ The expression, here, is obviously inaccurate. It
cannot be the _same good_ in Hume’s sense, _i.e._ equally pleasant in
prospect, when remote as when near.
[2] No other account of pleasure in beauty can be extracted from Hume
than this--that it is either a ‘primary impression of sense,’ so far
co-ordinate with any pleasant taste or smell that but for an accident
of language the term ‘beautiful’ might be equally applicable to
these, or else a pleasure in that indefinite anticipation of pleasure
which is called the contemplation of utility.
[3] _Ultimate_ because according to Hume the _immediate_ exciting
cause of a pleasure of pride may be one of love, and vice versa. In
that case, however, a more remote ‘exciting cause’ of the exciting
pleasure must be found in some impressions of sense, if the doctrine
that these are the sole ‘original impressions’ is to be maintained.
If pleasure sole motive, what is the distinction of self-love?
Its opposition to disinterested desires, as commonly understood,
disappears: it is desire for pleasure in general.
46. Anyone reading the ‘Treatise on Human Nature’ alongside of
Shaftesbury or Butler would be surprised to find that while sympathy
and benevolence fill a very large place in it, self-love ‘eo nomine’
has a comparatively small one. At first, perhaps, he would please
himself with thinking that he had come upon a more ‘genial’ system
of morals. The true account of the matter, however, he will find to
be that, whereas with Shaftesbury and his followers the notion of
self-love was really determined by opposition to those desires for
other objects than pleasure, in the existence of which they really
believed, however much the current psychology may have embarrassed
their belief, on the other hand with Hume’s explicit reduction of all
desire to desire for pleasure self-love loses the significance which
this opposition gave it, and can have no meaning except as desire for
‘pleasure in general’ in distinction from this or that particular
pleasure. Passages from the Essays may be adduced, it is true,
where self-love is spoken of under the same opposition under which
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson conceived of it, but in these, it will be
found, advantage is taken of the ambiguity between ‘emotion’ and
‘desire,’ covered by the term ‘passion.’ That there are sympathetic
_emotions_--pleasures occasioned by the pleasure of others--is, no
doubt, as cardinal a point in Hume’s system as that all _desire_
is for pleasure to self; but between such emotions and self-love
there is no co-ordination. No emotion, as he points out, determines
action directly, but only by exciting desire; which with him can
only mean that the image of the pleasant emotion excites desire for
its renewal. In other words, no emotion amounts to volition or will.
Self-love, on the other hand, if it means anything, means desire
and a possibly strongest desire, or will. It can thus be no more
determined by opposition to generous or sympathetic _emotions_ than
can these by opposition to hunger and thirst. Hume, however, when
he insists on the existence of generous ‘passions’ as showing that
self-love is not our uniform motive, though he cannot consistently
mean more than that desire for ‘pleasure in general,’ or desire for
the satisfaction of desire, is not the uniform motive--which might
equally be shown (as he admits) by pointing to such self-regarding
‘passions’ as love of fame, or such appetites as hunger--is yet
apt, through the reader’s interpretation of ‘generous passions’ as
_desires_ for something other than pleasure, to gain credit for
recognising a possibility of living for others, in distinction from
living for pleasure, which was in truth as completely excluded by his
theory as by that of Hobbes. If he himself meant to convey any other
distinction between self-love and the generous passions than one
which would hold no less between it and every emotion whatever, it
was through a fresh intrusion upon him of that notion of benevolence,
as a ‘desire not founded on pleasure,’ which was in too direct
contradiction to the first principles of his theory to be acquiesced
in. [1]
[1] Cf. II. p. 197 [Book II., part III., sec. III.], where, speaking
of ‘calm desires,’ he says they ‘are of two kinds; either certain
instincts originally implanted in our natures, such as benevolence
and resentment, the love of life, and kindness to children; or the
general appetite to good and aversion to evil, considered merely as
such.’ This seems to imply a twofold distinction of the ‘general
appetite to good’ _(a)_ from desires for particular pleasures, which
are commonly not calm, and _(b)_ from certain desires, which resemble
the ‘general appetite’ in being calm but are not for pleasure at all.
See above, sec. 31. In that section of the Essays where ‘self-love’
is expressly treated of, there is a still clearer appearance of the
doctrine, that there are desires (in that instance called ‘mental
passions’) which have not pleasure for their object any more than
have such ‘bodily wants’ as hunger and thirst. From these self-love,
as desire for pleasure, is distinguished, though, when the pleasure
incidental to their satisfaction is discovered and reflected on, it
is supposed to combine with them. (Vol. IV. Appendix on Self-love,
near the end. See above, sec. 43 and note.)
This amounts, in fact, to a complete withdrawal from Hume’s original
position and the adoption of one which is most clearly stated in
Hutcheson’s posthumous treatise--the position, namely, that we begin
with a multitude of ‘particular’ or ‘violent’ desires, severally
‘terminating upon objects’ which are not pleasures at all, and that,
as reason developes, these gradually blend with, or are superseded
by, the ‘calm’ desire for pleasure; so that moral growth means the
access of conscious pleasure-seeking. This in effect seems to be
Butler’s view, and Hutcheson reckons it ‘a lovely representation
of human nature,’ though he himself holds that benevolence may
exist, not merely as one of the ‘particular desires’ controlled
by self-love, but as itself a ‘calm’ and controlling principle,
co-ordinate with self-love. (‘System of Moral Philosophy,’ Vol. I. p.
51, &c.)
How Hume gives meaning to this otherwise unmeaning definition:
‘Interest,’ like other motives described, implies determination by
reason.