Context

The author has concluded his account of love and hatred in human beings and in this section will examine those passions as they occur in non-human animals. In the final Section of Part I, he had given an account of pride and humility in animals, and Book I, Part III, Section 16 contains an examination of reason in animals.

Background

In a footnote to Section II of his Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, Hutcheson describes the two faculties of animals as being “the External Senses suggesting notions of things as pleasant or painful; and . . . the Appetitus Sensitivus, or some instinctive Desires and Aversions.” He claims that they lack two powers of rational agents, understanding or reason, which is “attended with an higher sort of Sensations,” and a rational appetite, which he defines as “a constant natural Disposition of Soul to desire what the Understanding, or these sublimer Sensations, represent as Good, and to shun what they represent as an Evil, and this either when it respects ourselves or others.”

The Treatise

1. The author maintains that the same passions of love, hatred and their mixtures that are found in humans can also be found in “brutes,” or non-human animals. The operations that produce those passions in humans are simple enough that there should be no difficulty conceiving that they produce the same effects in animals. The reason is that no reflection or penetration into the nature of things is required, so that the “springs and principles” that produce the passions “are not peculiar to man, or any one species of animals.” This feature of the account obviously supports it.

2. The scope of love in animals is not restricted to members of their own species, but “comprehends almost every sensible and thinking being.” It is natural for dogs to love humans more than they love other dogs, and humans return the affection.

3. A limitation of animals is that they are “little susceptible either of the pleasures or pains of the imagination.” For this reason, their judgments about objects extend only to their sensible goods and evils, [or pleasures and pains they produce]. Thus we find that we can easily win the affections of animals by feeding them and treating them well, while we earn their enmity and ill-will when we beat and abuse them.

4. In humans, relations [of blood, nationality, profession, etc.,] are a common cause of love (as described in Section 4). They are much less so in animals, because they lack the understanding to trace those relations out, “except in very obvious instances.” However, acquaintance, devoid of any other relations but similar to them, works just as in humans, and “always produces love in animals either to men or to each other.” [The effect of acquaintance on the human passions of love and hatred is described in Section 4, paragraph 4 to the end. Similarly, resemblance has the same effect as relations, also because it is similar to relations. An example is the behavior of oxen, who will cavort with horses when in an enclosure with them only, but will associate with others of their species when they are available.

5. In humans, affection for offspring is a natural instinct, and so it is in non-human animals as well.

6. A further commonality between the springs and principles that produce love and hatred in human and non-human animals is the phenomenon of sympathy, “or the communication of passions,” which is no less strong in the non-human than the human animal. “Fear, anger, courage and other affections are frequently communicated from one animal to another, without their knowledge of that cause, which produc’d the original passion.” Similarly, grief is communicated among animals by sympathy, “and produces almost all the same consequences, and excites the same emotions as in our species.” An example is the response of dogs to the sorrowful howling of a fellow-dog. Another observation is that when animals of a species play among themselves, they use the same “members” in nearly the same way as those they use in fighting other species: claws, horns, teeth, etc. But “they most carefully avoid harming their companion, even tho’ they have nothing to fear from his resentment; which is an evident proof of the senses brutes have of each other’s pain and pleasure.”

7. Another phenomenon that can be explained only by sympathy is the animation of dogs when they hunt in a pack, rather than singly. Hunters know that this effect is increased, sometimes too much, when two packs join together, even when they are “strangers to each other.” If we did not have the experience of our group-behavior as, and understood it to be based on sympathy, we would be unable to explain this behavior of non-human animals.

8. Animals also have the passions of envy and malice [described in the case of humans in Section 8 as based on unfavorable comparison of others with ourselves]. The author speculates that these passions are more common in animals than the corresponding passion of pity, [which Section 7 describes as a secondary passion that results from our reflection on the condition of others]. The reason would be that it is easier to make observable comparisons with others than to use thought and imagination to represent the interests of others, as is the case with pity. [For a more detailed account of the kind of sympathy that produces pity, see Section 9.]

Dissertation II: Of the Passions

There is no corresponding part of Of the Passions.

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