A Treatise of Human Nature · David Hume
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO VOL. II.
It should be so, of course, if Hume’s theory of consciousness is to hold good, either in its general form, or in its application to morals, according to which all actions, those moved by pride among the rest, have pleasure for their ultimate motive; and no doubt he would have said that it was so. The idea of the beauty of a picture, for instance, is the original impression which it ‘makes on the senses’ as more faintly retained by the mind. But is the original impression _merely_ an impression--an impression undetermined by conceptions, and of which, therefore, as it is to the subject of it, nothing can be said, but simply that it is pleasant? This, too, in the particular instance of beauty, Hume seems to hold; [1] but if it is so, the idea of beauty, as determined by reference to the impression, is determined by reference to the indeterminate, and we know no more of the separate pleasure that excites the pleasure of pride, when we are told that its source is an impression of beauty, than we did before. Apart from any other reference, we only know that pride is a pleasure excited by a pleasure which is itself excited by a pleasure grown fainter.
Of effect, proximate cause, and ultimate cause, only one and the same thing can be said, viz., that each feels pleasant. Meanwhile in regard to that other relation from which the pleasure of pride, on its part, is supposed to take its character, the same question arises. This pleasure ‘has self for its object.’ Is self, then, an impression stronger or fainter? Can one feeling be said without nonsense to have another feeling for its object? If it can, what specification is gained for a pleasure or pain by reference to an object of which, as a mere feeling, nothing more can be said than that it is a pleasure or pain? If, on the other hand, the idea of self, relation to which makes the feeling of pride what it is, and through it determines action, is not a copy of any impression of sense or reflection--not a copy of any sight or sound, any passion or emotion [2]--how can it be true that the ultimate determination of action in all cases arises from pleasure or pain? [1] Vol. II., p. 96; IV [Book II., part I., sec. VIII.], ‘Dissertation on the Passions,’ II. 7. [2] Intr. to Vol. I., paragraph 208. Hume’s attempt to represent idea of self as derived from impression.
35. From the pressure of such questions as these Hume offers us two main subterfuges. One is furnished by his account of the self, as ‘that succession of related ideas and impressions of which we have an intimate memory and consciousness’ [1]--an account which, to an incurious reader, conveys the notion that ‘self,’ if not exactly an impression, is something in the nature of an impression, while yet it seems to give the required determination to the impression which has this for its ‘object.’ It is evident, however, that its plausibility depends entirely on the qualification of the ‘succession, &c.,’ as that of which we have an ‘intimate consciousness.’ The succession of impressions, simply as such, and in the absence of relation to a single subject, is nothing intelligible at all. Hume, indeed, elsewhere represents it as constituting time, which, as we have previously shown, [2] by itself it could not properly be said to do; but if it could, the characterisation of pleasure as having time for its object would not be much to the purpose.
The successive impressions and ideas are further said to be ‘related,’ _i.e._, _naturally_ related, according to Hume’s sense of the term; but this we have found means no more than that when two feelings have been often felt to be either like each other or ‘contiguous,’ the recurrence of one is apt to be followed by the recurrence in fainter form of the other. This characteristic of the succession brings it no nearer to the intelligible unity which it must have, in order to be an object of which the idea makes the pleasure of pride what it is. The notion of its having such unity is really conveyed by the statement that we have an ‘intimate consciousness’ of it. It is through these words, so to speak, that we read into the definition of self that conception of it which we carry with us, but of which it states the reverse. Now, however difficult it may be to say what this intimate consciousness is, it is clear that it cannot be one of the feelings, stronger or fainter--impressions or ideas--which the first part of the definition tells us form a succession, for this would imply that one of them was at the same time all the rest.
Nor yet can it be a compound of them all, for the fact that they are a succession is incompatible with their forming a compound. Here, then, is a consciousness, which is not an impression, and which we can only take to be derived from impressions by supposing these to be what they first become in relation to this consciousness. In saying that we have such a consciousness of the succession of impressions, we say in effect that we are other than the succession. How, then, without contradiction, can our self be said to _be_ the succession of impressions, &c.--a succession which in the very next word has to be qualified in a way that implies we are other than it? This question, once put, will save us from surprise at finding that in one place, among frequent repetitions of the account of self already given, the ‘succession &c.’ is dropped, and for it substituted ‘_the individual person_ of whose actions and sentiments each of us is intimately conscious.’ [3] [1] Vol, II., p. 77, &c. [Book II., part I., sec. II.] [2] Intr. to Vol. I., sec. 261. [3] Vol. II., p. 84. [Book II., part I., sec. V.] Another device is to suggest a physiological account of pride.
36. The other way of gaining an apparent determination for the impression, pride, without making it depend on relation to that which is not an impression at all, corresponds to that appeal to the ‘anatomist’ by the suggestion of which, it will be remembered, Hume avoids the troublesome question, how the simple impressions of sense, undetermined by relation, can have that definite character which they must have if they are to serve as the elements of knowledge. The question in that case being really one that concerns the simple impression, as it is for the consciousness of the subject of it, Hume’s answer is in effect a reference to what it is for the physiologist. So in regard to pride; the question being what character it can have, for the conscious subject of it, to distinguish it from any other pleasant feeling, except such as is derived from a conception which is not an impression, Hume is ready on occasion to suggest that it has the distinctive character which for the physiologist it would derive from the nerves organic to it, if such nerves could be traced. ‘We must suppose that nature has given to the organs of the human mind a certain disposition fitted to produce a peculiar impression or emotion, which we call PRIDE: to this emotion she has assigned a certain idea, viz., that of SELF, which it never fails to produce. This contrivance of nature is easily conceived. We have many instances of such a situation of affairs. The nerves of the nose and palate are so disposed, as in certain circumstances to convey such peculiar sensations to the mind; the sensations of lust and hunger always produce in us the idea of those peculiar objects, which are suitable to each appetite. These two circumstances are united in pride. The organs are so disposed as to produce the passion; and the passion, after its production, naturally produces a certain idea.’ [1]
If it were found to be conditioned by as specific a nervous irritation as the sensations of smell and taste to which Hume assimilates it, it would yet be no more the consciousness of such irritation than is the smell of a rose to the person smelling it. In the one case as in the other, the feeling, as it is to the subject of it, can only be determined by relation to other feelings or other modes of consciousness. It is by such a relation that, according to Hume’s general account of it, pride is determined, but the relation is to the consciousness of an object which, not being any form of feeling, has no proper place in his psychology. Hence in the passage before us he tries to substitute for it a physical determination of the emotion, which for the subject of it is no determination at all; and, having gained an apparent specification for it in this way, to represent as its product that idea of a distinctive object which he had previously treated as necessary to constitute it. Pride produces the idea of self, just as ‘the sensations of hunger and lust always produce in us the idea of those peculiar objects, which are suitable to each appetite.’
Now it is a large assumption in regard to animals other than men, that, because hunger and lust move them to eat and generate, they so move them through the intervention of any ideas _of objects_ whatever--an assumption which in the absence of language on the part of the animals it is impossible to verify--and one still more questionable, that the ideas of objects which these appetites (if it be so) produce in the animals, except as determined by self-consciousness, are ideas in the same sense as the idea of self. But at any rate, if such feelings produce ideas of peculiar objects, it must be in virtue of the distinctive character which, as feelings, they have for the subjects of them. The withdrawal, however, of determination by the idea of self from the emotion of pride, leaves it with no distinctive character whatever, and therefore with nothing by which we may explain its production of that idea as analogous to the production by hunger, if we admit such to take place, of the ‘idea of the peculiar object suited to it.’ [1] Cf. Vol. IV., ‘Dissertation on the Passions,’ II. 2. Account of love involves the same difficulties; and a further one as to nature of sympathy.
38. If, in Hume’s account of pride, for _pleasure_, wherever it occurs, is substituted _pain_, it becomes his account of humility. A criticism of one account is equally a criticism of the other; and with him every passion that ‘has self for its object,’ according as it is pleasant or painful, is included under one or other of these designations. In like manner, every passion that has ‘some other thinking being’ for its object, according as it is pleasant or painful, is either love or hatred. To these the key is to be found in the same ‘double relation of impressions and ideas’ by which pride and humility are explained. If beautiful pictures, for instance, belong not to oneself but to another person, they tend to excite not pride but esteem, which is a form of love. The idea of them is ‘naturally related’ to the idea of the person to whom they belong, and they cause a separate pleasure which naturally excites the resembling impression of which this other person is the object. Write ‘other person,’ in short, where before was written ‘self,’ and the account of pride and humility becomes the account of love and hatred.
Of this pleasure determined by the idea of another person, or of which such a person ‘is the object,’ Hume gives no _rationale_, and, failing this, it must be taken to imply the same power of determining feeling on the part of a conception not derived from feeling, which we have found to be implied in the pleasure of which self is the object. All his pains and ingenuity in the second part of the book ‘on the Passions,’ are spent on illustrating the ‘double relation of impressions and ideas’--on characterising the separate pleasures which excite the pleasure of love, and showing how the idea of the object of the exciting pleasure is related to the idea of the beloved person. The objection to this part of his theory, which most readily suggests itself to a reader, arises from the essential discrepancy which in many cases seems to lie between the exciting and the excited pleasure.
The drinking of fine wine, and the feeling of love, are doubtless ‘resembling impressions,’ so far as each is pleasant, and from the idea of the wine the transition is natural to that of the person who gives it; but is there really anything, it will be asked, in my enjoyment of a rich man’s wine, that tends to make me love him, even in the wide sense of ‘love’ which Hume admits? This objection, it will be found, is so far anticipated by Hume, that in most cases he treats the exciting pleasure as taking its character from sympathy. Thus it is not chiefly the pleasure of ear, sight, and palate, caused by the rich man’s music, and gardens, and wine, that excites our love for him, but the pleasure we experience through sympathy with his pleasure in them. [1] The explanation of love being thus thrown back on sympathy (which had previously served to explain that form of pride which is called ‘love of fame’), we have to ask whether sympathy is any less dependent than we have found pride to be on an originative, as distinct from a merely reproductive, reason. [1] Vol. II., p. 147. [Book II., part II., sec. V.] Hume’s account of sympathy.
39. ‘When any affection is infused by sympathy, it is at first known only by its effects, and by those external signs in the countenance and conversation which convey an idea of it.’ By inference from effect to cause, ‘we are convinced of the reality of the passion,’ conceiving it ‘to belong to another person, as we conceive any other matter of fact.’ This idea of another’s affection ‘is presently converted into an impression, and acquires such a degree of force and vivacity as to become the very passion itself, and produce an equal emotion as any original affection.’ The conversion is not difficult to account for when we reflect that ‘all ideas are borrowed from impressions, and that these two kinds of perceptions differ only in the degrees of force and vivacity with which they strike upon the soul.... As this difference may be removed in some measure by a relation between the impressions and ideas’--in the case before us, the relation between the impression of one’s own person and the idea of another’s, by which the vivacity of the former may be conveyed to the latter--‘’tis no wonder an idea of a sentiment or passion may by this means be so enlivened as to become the very sentiment or passion.’ [1] [1] Vol. II., pp. 111-114. [Book II., part I., sec. IX.]
It implies a self-consciousness not reducible to impressions. 40. Upon this it must be remarked that the inference from the 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]
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.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.