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 — David Hume — John Shaqi
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
David Hume · en
What I have said of pride is equally true of humility. The sensation
of humility is uneasy, as that of pride is agreeable; for which reason
the separate sensation arising from the causes must be reversed, while
the relation to self continues the same. Though pride and humility
are directly contrary in their effects and in their sensations, they
have notwithstanding the same object; so that 'tis requisite only to
change the relation of impressions without making any change upon that
of ideas. Accordingly we find, that a beautiful house belonging to
ourselves produces pride; and that the same house, still belonging
to ourselves, produces humility, when by any accident its beauty is
changed into deformity, and thereby the sensation of pleasure, which
corresponded to pride, is transformed into pain, which is related
to humility. The double relation between the ideas and impressions
subsists in both cases, and produces an easy transition from the one
emotion to the other.
In a word, nature has bestowed a kind of attraction on certain
impressions and ideas, by which one of them, upon its appearance,
naturally introduces its correlative. If these two attractions or
associations of impressions and ideas concur on the same object, they
mutually assist each other, and the transition of the affections and
of the imagination is made with the greatest ease and facility. When
an idea produces an impression, related to an impression, which is
connected with an idea related to the first idea, these two impressions
must be in a manner inseparable, nor will the one in any case be
unattended with the other. 'Tis after this manner that the particular
causes of pride and humility are determined. The quality which operates
on the passion produces separately an impression resembling it; the
subject to which the quality adheres is related to self, the object of
the passion: no wonder the whole cause, consisting of a quality and of
a subject, does so unavoidably give rise to the passion.
To illustrate this hypothesis, we may compare it to that by which I
have already explained the belief attending the judgments which we
form from causation. I have observed, that in all judgments of this
kind, there is always a present impression and a related idea; and
that the present impression gives a vivacity to the fancy, and the
relation conveys this vivacity, by an easy transition, to the related
idea. Without the present impression, the attention is not fixed, nor
the spirits excited. Without the relation, this attention rests on
its first object, and has no farther consequence. There is evidently
a great analogy betwixt that hypothesis, and our present one of an
impression and idea, that transfuse themselves into another impression
and idea by means of their double relation: which analogy must be
allowed to be no despicable proof of both hypotheses.
SECTION VI.
LIMITATIONS OF THIS SYSTEM.