G. J. Mattey’s Notes on Hume’s Treatise, Book 2, Part 2, Section 10

Notes on Hume’s Treatise

by G. J. Mattey

Book 2
Of the PASSIONS
PART 2
Of Love and Hatred.

Sect. 10. Of respect and contempt.

Part II of Book II is devoted to love and hatred, along with their related passions such as benevolence and anger, pity and malice. Each of these is not compounded with any other passion. In the present Section, the author considers the compounded passions of respect and contempt.

The treatment of respect and contempt here is dependent on the author’s account of love and humility and hence the topic is unique to the author.

1. [In the previous Section, the author has described way in which the passion of pity gives rise to love and malice to hatred. “There is always a mixture of love or tenderness with pity, and of hatred or anger with malice.” By this he meant that love always follows pity and hatred malice.] There remain only two kinds of mixed passions to be considered, those of respect and contempt, to be discussed in the present Section, and those of love between the sexes, treated in the next.

2. There are three ways to consider “the qualities and circumstances of others:”

3. The author takes it to be very evident from their very appearance, and thus not requiring proof, that contempt contains a portion of pride and respect of humility. It is equally evident that these passions result from “a tacit comparison of the person contemn’d or respect with ourselves.” Consider the my passions toward another, who possesses a certain quality. With no change in the other, I will have the respect if I view myself as inferior, love if I view myself as equal, and contempt if I view myself as superior. The cause of the passions may be traced entirely to my point of view. “These passions, therefore, arise from our observing the proportion; that is, from a comparison.”

4. The author claims to have observed earlier that people have a much greater tendency to pride than to humility. [In Section 4, paragraph 4, he does claim that we have a “great propensity” to pride, but no comparison has been made between pride and humility in this respect.] Moreover, he has tried to explain this propensity [in terms of much greater familiarity we have with ourselves than with others]. Regardless of the success of his attempt at explanation, the author believes that “the phænomenon is undisputed, and appears in many instances.” This tendency to pride over humility explains the greater proportion of pride in contempt than humility in respect. So predominant is pride in contempt that it is hard to make out any other passion mixed with it. On the other hand, in respect, love is clearly part of the mixture with humility. “The passion of vanity is so prompt, that it rouzes at the least call; while humility requires a stronger impulse to make it exert itself.”

5. At this point, the author raises a “difficulty” in the explanation of respect and contempt. The problem is that it would seem that there must always be a mixture of humility with love and pride with contempt. Suppose that another person has a quality that makes him the object of love. If I had that quality, it would produce pride in myself. But if I lacked it, I would compare myself to the other person and be humbled. Similarly, if the other person had a quality that makes me hate him, I would feel pride by comparison. And the mixture of pride and hatred is contempt. How, then, could pure love or pure hatred be possible?

6. Although the author has supposed a generic similarity between the pleasurable sensations of pride and love, and the painful sensations of humility and hatred, he now states that there are some specific “differences, and even contrarieties, which distinguish them.” Pride and vanity invigorate the mind like nothing else, while love and tenderness “weaken and enfeeble it.” Similarly, “Anger and hatred bestow a new force on all our thoughts and actions; while humility and shame deject and discourage us.” So we will have to treat the relevant passions differently.

7. This difference in the effects of the passions explains their different degrees in the passions of pride and love when the qualities that give rise to them are placed in the self or in another. An example given is that of genius and learning. They have two qualities that give rise to pride, their pleasantness and their magnificence. But only their pleasantness gives rise to love. A second example is that of ignorance and simplicity. The two qualities in them that lead to humility are their disagreeableness and meanness. But only their disagreeableness leads to hatred. “We may, therefore, consider it as certain, that tho’ the same object always produces love and pride, humility and hatred, according to its different situations, yet it seldom produces either the two former or the two latter passions in the same proportion.”

8. This feature of the passions then is mobilized to explain how an object can produce pure love or hatred, rather than producing a mixed passion of respect or contempt. If a quality produces the passion of humility by comparison of myself with another, then it must produce pride in myself if I have it. And if it produces pride by comparison with another only if it would produce humility if I have it myself. “This is evident, objects always produce by comparison a sensation directly contrary to their original one. But though the sensation be contrary, it need not be of the same degree. So the author asks us to suppose a quality that is well-suited to produce love but ill-suited to produce humility by comparison. There would be so little of humility in the compound that the love would not pass over to respect. Some examples are:

9. The Section concludes with the consideration of “a pretty curious phænomenon,” which is that we tend to keep a distance from those that we condemn, not allowing those who are inferior to us to get too close. The author notes that he had observed [in Section 8, paragraph 4], that nearly every ideas is accompanied by some passion, no matter how weak. This is so even with “ideas of number and extension,” and so much the more so with ideas of objects that “are exteem’d of consequence in life, and fix our attention.” If we consider a rich and a poor person, we will as a result have some passion of respect and contempt, respectively. If the contrariety of the passions is to be felt, the objects must be related in some way, “otherwise the affections are totally separate and distinct, and never encounter.” If the two people are side-by-side, this relation is enough to bring out the contrast, “which is a general reason why we are uneasy at seeing such disproportion’d objects, as a rich man and a poor one, an nobleman and a porter, in that situation.”

10. The uneasiness when confronted with the difference between a superior and an inferior is greater on the part of the superior than with a neutral spectator. The reason is that superior person regards the very fact that the inferior is nearby to be a sign of ill-breeding. Specifically, the inferior person does not recognize the disparity, and his behavior is not affected by it. If someone feels inferior, he will then be inclined to keep his distance from the superior and “redouble the marks of respect and reverence, when they are oblig’d to approach him.” Failure to observe this behavior indicates a lack of sensitivity to the relation between the two. In common speech, a great difference between people is called a “distance.” This apparently trivial figure of speech actually has its roots in “the natural principles of the imagination.” The perception of a great difference leads us to keep a great distance, so the two ideas of distance and difference are as a result “connected together.” The connection of ideas has as a consequence the mistaking of one for the other, which will be explaned later [in Part III, Section 7].

Only one sentence, toward the end of Section III, is devoted to the present topic. “In respect, there is a mixture of humility, with the esteem or affection: In contempt, a mixture of pride.”