Sec 10: Respect, Amorous Love

SEC. 10: RESPECT AND CONTEMPT

  • To understand all the passions which have any mix of love or hatred, only respect, contempt, and the amorous affection remain to be explained.
  • When we consider the qualities and circumstances of others, we may:
    • regard them as they really are in themselves,
      • The good qualities of others from this view produce love.
    • compare them and our own qualities and circumstances, or
      • This produces humility.
    • join these two methods.
      • This produces respect.
      • Respect is a mixture of love and respect.
  • The bad qualities of others cause hatred, pride, or contempt, depending on how we view them.
  • There is an obvious mixture of:
    • pride in contempt, and
    • humility in respect.
  • This mixture comes from a tacit comparison of the person contemned or respected with ourselves.
    • The same man may cause respect, love, or contempt by his condition and talents, depending on how equal or superior he is to the person who considers him.
  • In changing the point of view, the object may remain the same.
    • Its proportion to ourselves entirely alters.
    • This is the cause of an alteration in the passions.
  • Therefore, these passions arise from our comparison.
  • The mind has a much stronger propensity to pride than to humility.
  • I have tried to assign a cause for this phenomenon, from the principles of human nature.
    • This phenomenon:
      • is undisputed,
      • appears in many instances, and
      • is why there is a much greater mixture of pride in contempt, than of humility in respect, and
      • why we are more elevated with one below us, than mortified by one above us.
  • Contempt or scorn has so strong a tincture of pride, that there is no other passion discernable.
    • Whereas in esteem or respect, love makes a more considerable ingredient than humility.
  • Vanity is so prompt, that it rouses at the least call.
    • Humility requires a stronger impulse to make it exert itself.
  • Why does this mixture happen only in some cases?
  • All those objects which cause love when placed on another person, are the causes of:
    • pride when transferred to ourselves
    • humility and love consequently, while they:
      • belong to others
      • are only compared to those which we have ourselves.
  • In a like manner, every quality which produces hatred directly, should always cause pride by comparison.
    • By a mixture of hatred and pride, those qualities should excite contempt or scorn.
  • Why:
    • do objects ever cause pure love or hatred
    • don’t objects always produce the mixed passions of respect and contempt?
  • Love and pride, humility and hatred are similar in their sensations.
    • Love and pride are always agreeable.
    • Humility and hatred are always painful.
  • This be universally true.
    • But they have some differences, and even contrarieties, which distinguish them.
  • Pride and vanity most invigorates and exalts the mind.
    • Love or tenderness weakens and enfeebles it.
  • The same difference is observable between the uneasy passions.
    • Anger and hatred bestow a new force on all our thoughts and actions.
    • Humility and shame deject and discourage us.
  • We need to form a distinct idea of these qualities of the passions.
    • Let us remember that:
      • pride and hatred invigorate the soul
      • love and humility enfeeble it.
  • It follows that the conformity between love and hatred in the agreeableness of their sensation always makes them excited by the same objects.
    • Yet this other contrariety is why they are excited in very different degrees.
  • Genius and learning are pleasant and magnificent objects.
    • They are adapted to pride and vanity.
    • But they have a relation to love by their pleasure only.
  • Ignorance and simplicity are disagreeable and mean.
    • This gives them:
      • a double connection with humility
      • a single connection with hatred.
  • Therefore, the same object always produces love and pride, humility and hatred, according to its different situations.
    • But it seldom produces either of them in the same proportion.
  • We must seek a solution as to why any object:
    • ever excites pure love or hatred
    • does not always produce respect or contempt, by a mixture of humility or pride.
  • No quality in another gives rise to humility by comparison, unless it produced pride by being placed in ourselves.
    • Vice versa, no object excites pride by comparison, unless it produced humility by the direct survey.
  • Objects always produce a sensation directly contrary to their original one, by comparison.
    • Suppose an object, which produces love but imperfectly excites pride, is presented.
    • This object directly causes a great degree of love since it belongs to another
      • It causes a small degree of humility by comparison.
      • Consequently, humility is scarce felt.
      • It is unable to convert the love into respect.
  • This is the case with good nature, good humour, facility, generosity, beauty, and many other qualities in other people.
    • These can produce love in others.
      • But they do not excite so much pride in ourselves.
  • This is why they produce pure love with a small mix of humility and respect, when belonging to another person.
    • The same reasoning can be easily extended to the opposite passions.
  • Before we leave this subject, it may not be amiss to account for a pretty curious phenomenon, viz, why we commonly keep the people we contemn at a distance and do not allow our inferiors to approach too near in place and situation.
  • Almost every kind of idea is attended with some emotion and fix our attention.
    • For example:
      • the ideas of number and extension
      • important objects in life.
  • We cannot survey a rich or a poor man with total indifference.
    • We must feel some faint touches of:
      • respect in the rich man
      • contempt in the poor man.
    • These two passions are contrary to each other.
    • To make this contrariety felt, the objects must be related in some way.
    • Otherwise, the affections:
      • are totally separate and distinct
      • never encounter.
  • The relation takes place wherever the persons become contiguous.
    • This is a general reason why we are uneasy at seeing such disproportioned objects, as a rich man and a poor one, a nobleman and a porter, in that situation.
  • This uneasiness is common to every spectator.
    • It must be more sensible to the superior, because the inferior’s near approach:
      • is regarded as a piece of ill-breeding
      • shows that he is not:
        • sensible of the disproportion
        • affected by it.
  • A sense of superiority in another:
    • breeds an inclination in all men to keep themselves at a distance from him
    • determines them to redouble the marks of respect and reverence, when they are obliged to approach him.
  • and where they do not observe that conduct, it is a proof they are not sensible of his superiority.
  • From here too it proceeds, that any great difference in the degrees of any quality is called a distance by a common metaphor.
    • It is, however, founded on natural principles of the imagination.
  • A great difference inclines us to produce a distance.
    • Therefore, the ideas of distance and difference are connected together.
  • Connected ideas are readily taken for each other; and this is in general the source of the metaphor, as we shall have occasion to observe afterwards.

SEC. 11: THE LOVE BETWEEN THE SEXES

  • There are many compound passions arising from a mixture of love and hatred with other affections.
    • Of these, the love between a man and woman most deserves our attention.
    • This is because of:
      • its force and violence, and
      • those curious principles of philosophy behind it.
  • In its most natural state, this love is derived from the conjunction of three different impressions or passions:
    • the pleasing sensation arising from beauty,
    • the bodily appetite for generation, and
    • a generous kindness or goodwill.
  • The origin of kindness from beauty is explained from the foregoing reasoning.
    • The question is how the bodily appetite is excited by it.
  • The appetite of generation, when confined to a certain degree:
    • is of the pleasant kind, and
    • has a strong connection with all the agreeable emotions.
  • This desire is encouraged by:
    • Joy, mirth, vanity, and kindness
    • music, dancing, wine, and good cheer.
  • On the other hand, sorrow, melancholy, poverty, humility destroy it.
    • It is easy to see why it should be connected with the sense of beauty.
  • But there is another principle that contributes to the same effect.
    • The parallel desires of beauty and generation is a real relation.
    • The resemblance in their sensations connects them to each other.
  • To fully comprehend the extent of this relation, we must consider that any principal desire may be attended with subordinate ones connected with it.
    • If other subordinate desires are parallel, they are related to the principal one by that means.
  • Thus, hunger may often be considered as the soul’s primary inclination.
    • The desire for meat is the secondary one, since it is needed to satisfy that appetite.
    • Therefore, an object that inclines us to approach the meat will naturally increase our appetite.
    • On the contrary, whatever inclines us to set our victuals at a distance:
      • is contradictory to hunger
      • reduces our inclination to them.
  • Beauty has the first effect, and deformity the second effect.
    • This is why:
      • beauty gives us a keener appetite for our victuals
      • deformity is sufficient to disgust us at the most savoury dish.
  • All this is easily applicable to the appetite for generation.

 

  • From these two relations (resemblance and a parallel desire), a connection arises between:
    • the sense of beauty
    • the bodily appetite
    • benevolence
  • These three become inseparable:
    • It is indifferent which of them advances first.
    • Since any of them is almost sure to be attended with the related affections.
  • A man inflamed with lust, at least feels a momentary kindness towards its object or woman.
    • At the same time, he fancies her more beautiful than ordinary.
  • There are as many who begin with kindness and esteem for the person’s wit and merit, and advance from that to the other passions.
  • But the most common species of love is that which:
    • first arises from beauty
    • afterwards diffuses itself into:
      • kindness
      • the bodily appetite.
  • Kindness or esteem, and the appetite to generation, are too remote to unite easily together.
    • Kindness is perhaps the most refined passion of the soul.
    • The appetite for generation is the most gross and vulgar.
  • The love of beauty:
    • is placed in a just medium between them
    • shares both their natures.
  • From there, it is so singularly fitted to produce both.
  • This account of love is not peculiar to my system.
    • But it is unavoidable on any hypothesis.
  • Its three affections are distinct.
    • Each of them has its distinct object.
  • Therefore, they produce each other only by their relation.
    • But the relation of passions alone is insufficient.
    • There should also be a relation of ideas.
  • The beauty of one person never inspires us with love for another.
    • This is a sensible proof of the double relation of impressions and ideas.
  • From this single evident instance, we may form a judgment of the rest.
  • This also illustrates the origin of pride and humility, love and hatred.
  • The self is the object of pride and humility.
  • Some other person is the object of love and hatred.
  • Yet these objects alone cannot be the causes of those passions.
    • Since each of them has a relation to two contrary affections which must destroy each other at the very first moment.
  • The mind has certain organs naturally fitted to produce a passion which naturally turns the view to a certain object.
    • But this is insufficient to produce the passion.
    • Another emotion is required to:
      • set these principles in action
      • bestow on them their first impulse, through a double relation of impressions and ideas.
  • This situation is still more remarkable with regard to the appetite of generation.
    • Sex is the object and the cause of the appetite.
  • We turn our view to it when actuated by that appetite.
    • Reflecting on it suffices to excite the appetite.
  • But this cause loses its force by too great frequency.
    • It needs to be quickened by some new impulse.
    • We find that impulse to arise from the person’s beauty, that is, from a double relation of impressions and ideas.
  • This double relation is necessary where an affection has a distinct cause and object.
    • How much more so is it necessary when it only has a distinct object, without any determinate cause?

SEC 12: THE LOVE AND HATRED OF ANIMALS

  • Love and hatred are common to the whole sensitive creation.
    • Their causes have such a simple nature that they can easily be supposed to operate on animals.
  • There is no force of reflection or penetration required.
  • Everything is conducted by springs and principles, which are not peculiar to man or any one species of animals.
  • The conclusion from this is obvious in favour of the foregoing system.
  • Love in animals comprehends almost every sensible and thinking being.
  • A dog naturally:
    • loves a man above his own species
    • very commonly meets with a return of affection.
  • Animals are little susceptible of the imagination’s pleasures or pains, they can judge objects only by the sensible good or evil the objects produce.
    • From that, animals must regulate their affections towards them.
  • By benefits or injuries we produce their love or hatred.
  • By feeding and cherishing any animal, we quickly acquire his affections.
  • By beating and abusing him, we always draw his enmity and ill-will.
  • Love in beasts is not caused so much by relation, as in our species.
    • Because their thoughts are not so active as to trace relations, except in very obvious instances.
  • Yet sometimes, love has a considerable influence on them.
  • Acquaintance has the same effect as relation.
    • Thus, it always produces love in animals to men or to other animals.
    • For the same reason, any likeness among them is the source of affection.
      • An ox, confined to a park with horses, will naturally join their company.
      • But he will always enjoy the company of his own species if he has the choice of both.
  • The affection of parents to their young proceeds from a peculiar instinct in animals, as well as in our species.
  • Sympathy, or the communication of passions, takes place among animals, no less than among men.
  • Fear, anger, courage, and other affections are frequently communicated from one animal to another, without them knowing the cause which produced the original passion.
  • Grief likewise:
    • is received by sympathy
    • produces almost all the same consequences
    • excites the same emotions as in our species.
  • A dog’s howlings and lamentations produce a sensible concern in his fellows.
  • Almost all animals use the same body parts in playing and in fighting:
    • lions, tigers, and cats use their paws
    • oxen use their horns
    • dogs use their teeth
    • horses use their heels
  • It is remarkable that they most carefully avoid harming their companion, even though they have nothing to fear from his resentment.
    • This is an evident proof of the sense which animals have of each other’s pain and pleasure.
  • Everyone has observed how much more dogs are animated when they hunt in a pack, than when they pursue their game apart.
    • This can proceed from nothing but sympathy.
  • When two packs, that are strangers to each other, are joined, hunters know that dogs become more animated, sometimes even too animated. .
    • We might be unable to explain this phenomenon, if we did not have a similar experience in ourselves.
  • Envy and malice are passions very remarkable in animals.
    • They are perhaps more common than pity, as requiring less effort of thought and imagination.

Words: 2548

Leave a comment