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.
- regard them as they really are in themselves,
- 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.
- This phenomenon:
- 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.
- Let us remember that:
- 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.
- This gives them:
- 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.
- These can produce love in others.
- 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.
- For example:
- 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.
- We must feel some faint touches of:
- 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.
- It must be more sensible to the superior, because the inferior’s near approach:
- 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.
- This is why:
- 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