BOOK II. of the passions.

PART I. of pride and humility

SECTION VIII. Of beauty and deformity

The body is connected enough with ourselves to be involved in the double relation necessary to the causes of pride and humility. Beauty gives "a peculiar delight and satisfaction; as deformity produces pain, upon whatever subject it may be plac’d, and whether survey’d in an animate or inanimate object." When we place it in our own bodies, we get the requisite passions.

This effect of personal and bodily qualities constitutes a stronger argument for the system. All systems of aesthetics take it that beauty is found in an ordering which gives pleasure and satisfaction to the soul, and deformity the opposite. This is due to either the primary constitution of our nature, custom, or caprice. The effect is the distinguishing character of the beautiful, "forming all the difference." "Pleasure and pain, therefore, are not only necessary attendants of beauty and deformity, but constitute their very essence." Order is connected to utility, which is connected to pleasure and pain. Beauty cannot be defined, but is a form which produces pleasure. All beauty’s effects, including pride, are derived from the sensation of pleasure.

Suppose it false that the power of producing pleasure is the essence of beauty. It is still difficult to consider them apart. It is the only thing in common between natural and moral beauty, and so it must be the cause. Similarly, the only difference between beauty in our own bodies and in external things is the relation to ourselves. This explains the influence on the passion of pride in the former case but not the latter. So here is the system resulting: "Pleasure, as a related or resembling impression, when plac’d on a related object, by a natural transition, produces pride; and its contrary, humility."

We will be able to explain ambition, because strength is a kind of power, and the desire to excel in it is "an inferior species" of ambition.

Whatever is useful, beautiful or surprising in our bodily accomplishments is an object of pride. They agree only in the production of pleasure, so the pleasure in relation to the self is the cause of it.

Beauty as a secondary quality, like surprise. There is nothing in surprise but the impression to produce pride in us. Anything in us or belonging to us that produces surprise induces vanity. To attain vanity, the vulgar make up surprising stories about themselves, appropriating talent that belongs to others.

There are two experiments with these conclusions. 1. An object produces pride merely by interposing pleasure, and its only quality is doing so. A surprising adventure is related to us and produces pride. 2. Pleasure produces pride by a transition, which, when cut off, eliminates the passion immediately. And the adventures of others never cause pleasure except through the relation to ourselves which calls up pride.

An objection is raised: people are generally not proud of health or mortified about sickness, even though the relation to the body is of agreeableness or disagreeableness, respectively. But this can be overcome by appeal to the qualifications of the system: sickness and health are not peculiar or constant enough. Their inconstancy makes them seem accidental, and thus "never consider’d as connected with our being and existence." But when it does become constant (infirmities of old age), it becomes the object of humility. [cf. aging "baby boomers"] Although particular infirmities do not induce the passions in younger men, the constant fact that they are subject to them "mortify human pride, and make us entertain a mean opinion of our nature."

We feel shame in others’ maladies when they affect others: the horror of epilepsy, the contagion of the itch, the genetic quality of the king’s evil. "Men always consider the sentiments of others in their judgments of themselves."