Sec 1: Love, Hatred

SEC. 1: THE OBJECT AND CAUSES OF LOVE AND HATRED

  • It is impossible to define love and hatred.
    • Because they produce merely a simple impression, without any mixture or composition.
  • It would be as unnecessary to describe them from their nature, origin, causes and objects because they are sufficiently known from our common feeling and experience.
    • We have already observed this concerning pride and humility.
  • There is a great resemblance between these two sets of passions.
    • We shall abridge of our reasonings on pride and humility to explain love and hatred.
  • The immediate object of pride and humility is self or that identical person whose thoughts, actions, and sensations we are intimately conscious of.
    • The object of love and hatred is some other person, whose thoughts, actions, and sensations we are not conscious of.
  • This is sufficiently evident from experience.
    • Our love and hatred are always directed to some sensible being external to us.
    • When we talk of self-love, it is not in a proper sense,
    • the sensation it produces does anything in common with that tender emotion excited by a friend or mistress.
  • It is the same case with hatred.
    • We may be mortified by our own faults and follies.
    • but never feel any anger or hatred except from the injuries of others.
  • But though the object of love and hatred is always some other person.
    • It is plain that the object is not the cause of these passions or alone sufficient to excite them.
  • Love and hatred:
    • are directly contrary in their sensation
    • have the same object in common.
      • If that object were also their cause, it would produce these opposite passions in an equal degree.
      • They must, from the very first moment, destroy each other.
      • None of them would ever be able to make its appearance.
  • Therefore, there must be some cause different from the object.
  • The causes of love and hatred:
    • are very much diversified.
    • do not have many things in common.
  • The virtue, knowledge, wit, good sense, good humour of any person, produce love and esteem, and hatred and contempt.
    • The same passions arise from:
      • bodily accomplishments, such as beauty, force, swiftness, dexterity; and their contraries
      • from the external advantages and disadvantages of family, possession, clothes, nation and climate.
  • From these causes, we derive a new distinction between:
    • the quality that operates
    • the subject on which it is placed.
  • A prince that has a stately palace, commands the esteem of the people:
    • at first, by the beauty of the palace
    • secondly, by the relation of property, which connects the beauty with him.
  • The removal of either of these destroys the passion.
    • It proves that the cause is a compounded one.
  • It would be tedious to trace the passions of love and hatred, through all our observations on pride and humility equally applicable to both.
  • Generally:
    • the object of love and hatred is some thinking person
    • the sensation of the love is always agreeable, and of hatred is uneasy.
  • We can show with probability, that
    • the cause of both passions is always related to a thinking being
    • the cause of love produces a separate pleasure
    • the cause of of the latter a separate uneasiness.
  • The supposition, that the cause of love and hatred must be related to a thinking being in order to produce them, is:
    • probable
    • too obvious to be contested.
  • The following excite no love or hatred, esteem or contempt towards those unrelated to them:
    • virtue and vice in the abstract
    • beauty and deformity, when placed on inanimate objects
    • poverty and riches when belonging to a third person.
  • A person looking out at a window sees me in the street and a beautiful palace unrelated to me.
    • This person will not pay me the same respect, as if I were owner of the palace.
  • It is not so evident at first sight, that:
    • a relation of impressions is requisite to these passions
    • because in the transition the one impression is so much confounded with the other, that they become indistinguishable.
  • But as in pride and humility, we have easily been able to:
    • make the separation
    • prove that every cause of these passions produces a separate pain or pleasure
  • I might use this method to examine the causes of love and hatred.
    • But I delay this examination for a moment.
  • Instead, I shall convert all my reaaonings on pride and humility to my present purpose, by an argument founded on unquestionable examination.
  • Persons satisfied with their own character, genius, or fortune desire to:
    • show themselves to the world
    • acquire mankind’s love and approbation.
  • The very same qualities and circumstances which cause pride or self-esteem also cause vanity.
    • We always view those particulars which best satisfies ourselves.
  • But if love and esteem were not produced by the same qualities as pride, as these qualities are related to ourselves or others, this method would be very absurd.
    • Men could not expect a correspondence in the sentiments of every other person, with those themselves have entertained.
  • Few can form exact systems of the passions, or make reflections on their general nature and resemblances.
  • But without such a progress in philosophy, we are not subject to many mistakes in this.
  • We are guided by common experience and a kind of presentation which tells us what will operate on others, by what we feel immediately in ourselves.
  • The same qualities that produce pride or humility cause love or hatred.
    • All the arguments to prove that the causes of pride and humility excite a pain or pleasure, will be applicable with equal evidence to the causes of love and hatred.
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