Philosophical Works, v. 2 (of 4): Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Published by the AuthorHume, David
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Philosophical Works, v. 2 (of 4): Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Published by the Author
Hume, David
Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, English -- 18th century
But this is evidently contrary to experience. For though 'tis certain
we never love any person without desiring his happiness, nor hate any
without wishing his misery, yet these desires arise only upon the ideas
of the happiness or misery of our friend or enemy being presented by
the imagination, and are not absolutely essential to love and hatred.
They are the most obvious and natural sentiments of these affections,
but not the only ones. The passions may express themselves in a hundred
ways, and may subsist a considerable time, without our reflecting on
the happiness or misery of their objects; which clearly proves that
these desires are not the same with love and hatred, nor make any
essential part of them.
We may therefore infer, that benevolence and anger are passions
different from love and hatred, and only conjoined with them by the
original constitution of the mind. As nature has given to the body
certain appetites and inclinations, which she increases, diminishes,
or changes according to the situation of the fluids or solids, she
has proceeded in the same manner with the mind. According as we
are possessed with love or hatred, the correspondent desire of the
happiness or misery of the person who is the object of these passions,
arises in the mind, and varies with each variation of these opposite
passions. This order of things, abstractedly considered, is not
necessary. Love and hatred might have been unattended with any such
desires, or their particular connexion might have been entirely
reversed. If nature had so pleased, love might have had the same effect
as hatred, and hatred as love. I see no contradiction in supposing a
desire of producing misery annexed to love, and of happiness to hatred.
If the sensation of the passion and desire be opposite, nature could
have altered the sensation without altering the tendency of the desire,
and by that means made them compatible with each other.
SECTION VII.
OF COMPASSION.
But though the desire of the happiness or misery of others, according
to the love or hatred we bear them, be an arbitrary and original
instinct implanted in our nature, we find it may be counterfeited on
many occasions, and may arise from secondary principles. _Pity_ is
a concern for, and _malice_ a joy in, the misery of others, without
any friendship or enmity to occasion this concern or joy. We pity
even strangers, and such as are perfectly indifferent to us: and
if our ill-will to another proceed from any harm or injury, it is
not, properly speaking, malice, but revenge. But if we examine these
affections of pity and malice, we shall find them to be secondary ones,
arising from original affections, which are varied by some particular
turn of thought and imagination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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