Context

The author has described in Sections 1-5 the general mechanism whereby the passions of pride and humility are produced. In Section 6, he noted cases in which this mechanism does not produce these passions. Sections 7-10 discuss four qualities that when present in certain “subjects,” are productive of pride and humility without any assistance: virtue and vice, beauty and deformity, external advantages and disadvantages, and property and riches, respectively. In this section, the author describes an additional cause of these passions, one which requires a factor in addition to a quality of a subject.

Background

Hutcheson claimed that we have a “Sense of Honour, which makes the Approbation, or Gratitude of others, for any good Actions we have done, the necessary occasion of pleasure, and their Dislike, Condemnation, or Refinement of Injuries done by us, the occasion of that uneasy Sensation called Shame, even when we fear no further evil from them” (An Essay on the Natural Conduct of the Passions, Section 1). This supposed sense allows us to “discern an immediate Good in . . . Honour, not referred to any further Enjoyment” (An Essay on the Natural Conduct of the Passions, Preface). We desire our own honor because of the pleasure it gives us. And because we cannot avoid familiarity with the opinions of others about our conduct, we desire that those opinions be good ones, which “necessarily gives us pleasure” (An Essay on the Natural Conduct of the Passions, Section 4). In this system, Hutcheson does not appeal to sympathy to explain our love of being praised by others. There is, however, a correlate to what the author calls “sympathy.”. This is yet another human sense, which Hutcheson calls the “public sense.” The public sense is “our determination to be pleased with the Happiness of others, and to be uneasy at their Misery” (An Essay on the Natural Conduct of the Passions, Section 1). Since the public sense, like the sense of honor, is said to be original, Hutcheson has no need to explain it further.

The Treatise

1. Besides the aforementioned causes of pride and humility, virtue/vice, beauty/deformity, etc., there is also a secondary, and equally influential, cause of these passions: one’s reputation, character, and good name. Virtue, beauty, and riches in fact have little influence when not praised by others. To explain this fact, it is necessary to leave the main thread of the discussion and explain the nature of sympathy.

2. Human beings have a natural propensity “to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to, our own.” The author asserts that no quality of human nature is more remarkable than this, either in and of it self, or with respect to its consequences for the human mind. Children afford the best example of this phenomenon, as they are wont to believe whatever is told them, but even the learned have a hard time maintaining an opinion that is opposed by “their friends and daily companions.” The influence of the opinions of others is the best explanation of the uniformity of beliefs among peoples of a nation. It is far more plausible than factors such as soil-conditions and climate. While they are stable, governments rarely last more than a century. People really are influenced in their sentiments by their company, so much so that such influences are more powerful than our natural inclinations. “So remarkable a phænomenon merits our attention, and must be trac’d up to its first principles.”

3. Suppose that a person is in a certain condition, and it is communicated to us by sympathy. All we have to go on initially are the effects of their being in that condition and the external signs that give us an idea of it. The idea, in turn, is converted into an impression by becoming increasingly vivid to us, so much so “as to become the very passion itself, and produce an equal emotion, as any original affection.” The passage from idea to impression may itself be instantaneous, but the philosopher can analyze it into the “views and reflections” from which it proceeds.

4. The idea or, strictly speaking, the impression, of ourselves is more lively than any other that we can imagine. Given the claims made by the author in Section 7, that relations of perceptions convey the vivacity from one to the other, perceptions related to those of ourselves should be very vivid. Causation conveys vivacity most efficiently, but the relations of resemblance and contiguity do so as well. This is especially so when the object that is resembling and contiguous is believed to exist as the result of causal inference from external signs.

5. In both body and mind, other people bear a great resemblance to ourselves, despite the great degree of variation among them. “There is a very remarkable resemblance, which preserves itself amidst all their variety; and this resemblance must very much contribute to make us enter into the sentiments of the others, and embrace them with facility and pleasure.” This general resemblance is augmented by further similarities of manners, character, country or language. And the stronger the relation, the greater the sympathy, because the imagination makes an easy transition from the idea of the other to the perception of ourselves.

6. The relation of contiguity reinforces the influence of resemblance. The states of who are located distantly have much less effect on us than those nearby, and it is only by being near that they can be communicated completely. Further, causation plays a role, in that it is a relation we have to our relatives, whose states concern us more than those of others. Knowing the other persons is also a factor, which will be explained more fully in Part II, Section 4. “All these relations, when united together, convey the impression or consciousness of our own person to the idea of the sentiments or passions of others, and make us conceive them in the strongest and most lively manner.”

7. After citing the enlivening powers of various relations to other people, he recounts his claim from Book I, Part I, Section 1 that the only difference between impressions and ideas is their degree of force and vivacity. This is due to the fact that their component parts are the same and “the manner and order of their appearance may be the same.” Given that the disparity in force and vivacity of an idea may be augmented when it has strong enough relations to other perceptions, “’tis no wonder an idea of a sentiment or passion, may by this means be so enliven’d as to become the very sentiment or passion.” One way that an idea may be converted into an impression is when our imagination takes over and converts an imaginary pain into a real one. But the conversion from idea to impression is “most remarkable in the opinions and affections.” Our affections are more susceptible to this conversion, given that they depend more on ourselves and the way our mind operates. Thus, they are more naturally dependent on the imagination and from the lively ideas that we form of these affections. “This is the nature and cause of sympathy; and ’tis after this manner we enter so deep into the opinions and affections of others, whenever we discover them.”

8. The phenomena of sympathy give a strong confirmation to the system of the understanding described in Book I and the system of the passions so far described in Book II. This is “[w]hat is principally remarkable in the whole affair.” The reason for the dual confirmation is the analogy of the two systems to each other. The author takes it as “evident” from “the plainest experience” that when sympathy arises, there is first are ideas of others’ states in the understanding of the sympathizer and then that “the ideas of the affections of others are converted into the very impressions they represent, and that the passions arise in conformity to the ideas we form of them. The only role of philosophy is to explain these data. The explanation is very clear: the relation of cause and effect connects our idea with the external signs of another’s passions and thence to the passion itself. But “to feel sympathy in its full perfection,” we rely on resemblance and contiguity, which are able to convert the idea into a full-strength impression. This should convince us that the relation of cause and effect, acting by itself, can do the same thing [as in the case of the production of a belief, a vivid perception, from an idea]. In fact, sympathy, by producing an impression, out-strips causality, which only produces a vivid idea. Otherwise, the two processes of enlivening perceptions are “exactly correspondent.”

9. Having outlined the nature of sympathy, the author now applies his results to the question at hand, the generation of the passions of pride from praise and humility from blame of others. The first point is that any quality of the person praised or blamed by another would be a source of pride or humility if the other possessed it. One may be praised for one’s “power, or riches, or family, or virtue,” all of which are sources of pride. So, if the praise or blame would make a person consider himself in the same way as the other person would if he had the relevant qualities, “he woul’d first receive a separate pleasure, and afterwards a pride or self-satisfaction, according to the hypothesis above-explain’d.” [This hypothesis is that of the “double impulse” of ideas and impressions. The person would have an idea of himself with an admirable quality and connect the idea to himself, while he would have a pleasurable impressions, which would be directed toward himself.] And we do consider the “eulogisms” of others to describe qualities of ourselves. This comes from both the sympathy that makes us reproduce in ourselves the sentiments of others, and from reasoning, according to which we take their judgment to be an argument of sorts for the truth of the qualities they attribute to us. “These two principles of authority and sympathy influence almost all of our opinions; but must have a peculiar influence, when we judge of our own worth and character.” Judgments about our worth and character are accompanied by passions (as noted in Book I, Part III, Section 10). Passions in fact have the greatest tendency to upset our reasoning and move us to adopt unfounded opinions, because a passion “diffuses itself over the imagination, and gives an additional force to every related idea.” A final point is that because we have a partiality to our own worth, whatever reinforces our favorable view of ourselves pleases us, and whatever opposes it shocks us.

10. While this reasoning looks good in theory, to “bestow a full certainty on this reasoning, we must examine the phænomena of the passions, and see if they agree with it.”

11. The first point is that while we value being praised as such, we attribute even more value to praise by those whom we esteem, as opposed to condemnation by those “whom we hate and despise.” Similarly, we are more upset by condemnation by those whose judgment we trust than by that by people we do not know. The author continues [apparently attacking the view of Hutcheson noted above], that if the desire for fame were “receiv’d from a natural instinct,” we should be indifferent as for the source of the praise. “The judgment of a fool is the judgment of another person, as well as that of a wise man, and is only inferior in its influence on our judgment.”

12. The author’s account also explains why we are more heavily influenced by someone we have known for a long time. [This would be explained by the influence of reasoning, which leads us to weight the opinions of some over the opinions of others, as explained in paragraph 9.]

13. The only real pleasure we get from the praises of others is when they concur with our opinion of ourselves and concern qualities which we value. So, a merchant would not get much pleasure if praised for his scholarship. If we do value a quality and believe we lack it, no amount of praise will help our pride very much, because we do not accept that account of ourselves.

14. The author now turns to an example that will “afford many convincing arguments for my present purpose.” Many people who come from good families but have become impoverished leave their familiar surroundings and go to live among strangers. Because they are unknown, their poverty will “by that means sit more easily upon” them.

15. The first conclusion to be drawn from the sentiments of those who take this course is that the uneasiness that they feel in being condemned for their mean condition “depends on sympathy, and that sympathy depends on the relation of objects to ourselves.” The specific relations are the causal relation to one’s family and the relation of contiguity: our nearby relatives put us down. “Hence we seek to diminish this sympathy and uneasiness by separating these relations, and placing oursevles in contiguity to strangers, and at a distance from relations.”

16. The second conclusion is that it is not the existence of relations themselves, but how the relations influence us that increase or diminish sympathy. When our relatives are nearby, the condemnation stings the most, but when they are distant, the sympathy decreases. The reason is that the ideas we have of the other people’s views of ourselves are not so closely related to the idea of ourselves, once the link of contiguity is broken.

17. The third conclusion is that even if there are two streams of contempt, one from distant relatives, and one from nearby strangers, they do not unite, because the people are different. so, “this difference of ideas [of the people] separates the impressions arising from the contempt, and keeps them from running into each other.” The author claims that “this phænomenon is analogous to the system of pride and humility above-explain’d, which may seem so extraordinary to vulgar apprehensions.” [Here, the point is that the lack of either the relation of cause and effect or the relation of contiguity is sufficient to diminish the ease of transition from the pain we feel upon condemnation to a pain in our view of ourselves.]

18. The fourth and final conclusion is that the force of sympathy is blocked by the concealment of the person’s former status, which makes him feel much better. If the strangers were to know of his past life, then they would compare it with his present life, which would be mortifying. But the only comparison that can be made is in his own thought, in which case sympathy [i.e., the communication of the bad sentiments of the others] does not operate, all for the better.

19. The author now states his hypothesis: “that the pleasure, which we receive from praise, arises from a communication of sentiments.” He claims that any objections to this hypothesis actually help to confirm it, if we understand them correctly. Suppose someone despises the vulgar, yet is pleased by their praise. [How could the system account for his pleasure?] The explanation is that it is not sympathy that leads to the pleasure, but rather his reasoning that he deserves the praise simply because so many people praise him (“their multitude gives them additional weight and authority.”) [See paragraph 9 for the connection between reasoning and authority.] A second objection is that people who plagiarize are made proud by praise for work they did not do. [This is in opposition to the claim that the opinion of others matters because it confirms our opinion about ourselves.] The response here is that the plagiarist is not being objective, but rather is merely imagining his merit, and the sympathy that results from the praise of others only enlivens the false image he has constructed of himself (“castle-building”). A third objection is that proud people, who do not readily assent to contempt, are nonetheless shocked by it. [If the proud person has such a high opinion of himself, why would criticism that he dismisses bother him?] The explanation here is that the natural passion of pride collides with the feeling transmitted by sympathy from the critics. A similar objection is that a “violent lover” is most displeased when you condemn his love. [Why would the condemnation bother him, given the depth of his love?] In fact, your criticism will not have any effect on his self-image unless he can reproduce your feelings, i.e., is in sympathy with you. “If he despises you, or perceives you are in jest, whatever you say has no effect upon him.”

Dissertation II: Of the Passions

The love of fame is discussed in Section II, paragraph 10. Hume notes the strong influence on our opinions of “society and sympathy,” so that it is hard to maintain an opinion in the face of nearly universal opposition from our friends and others with whom we deal. [Compare paragraphs 2 and 9 above.] The most vulnerable of our opinions are those of our own value. This is because we recognize the difficulty of viewing ourselves objectively: we are naturally partial to ourselves, and we are too close to ourselves to get the kind of view that distance brings. For this reason, we “hearken anxiously to the opinions of others, who are better qualified to form just opinions concerning us. Hence that strong love of fame, with which all mankind are possessed.” To obtain a favorable opinion of ourselves, we seek the applause of others. We desire to be praised for the same reason that a beautiful woman looks in a mirror to please herself. The mechanism that generates sympathy is described only briefly in Section III, paragraph 2, in connection with the topic of Part II, Section 4 of the Treatise, the love of relations. “Our imagination, passing from self, which is ever intimately present to us, runs smoothly along the relation or connexion, and conceives with a full sympathy the person, who is nearly related to self.”

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