[1] See above, sec. 25.
Hume excludes every object of desire but pleasure.
29. In contrast with these well-meant efforts to derive that distinction between the selfish and unselfish, between the pleasant and the morally good, which the Christian conscience requires, from principles that do not admit of it, Hume’s system has the merit of relative consistency. He sees that the two sides of Locke’s doctrine—one that thought originates nothing, but takes its objects as given in feeling, the other that the good which is object of desire is pleasant feeling—are inseparable. Hence he decisively rejects every notion of rational or unselfish affections, which would imply that they are other than desires for pleasure; of virtue, which would imply that it antecedently determines, rather than is constituted by, the specific pleasure of moral sense; and of this pleasure itself, which would imply that anything but the view of tendencies to produce pleasure can excite it. But here his consistency stops. The principle which forbade him to admit any object of desire but pleasure is practically forgotten in his account of the sources of pleasure, and its being so forgotten is the condition of the desire for pleasure being made plausibly to serve as a foundation for morals. It is the assumption of pleasures determined by objects only possible for reason, made in the treatise on the Passions, that prepares the way for the rejection of reason, as supplying either moral motive or moral standard, in the treatise on Morals.
His account of ‘direct passions’: All desire is for pleasure.
30. ‘The passions’ is Hume’s generic term for ‘impressions of reflection’—appetites, desires, and emotions alike. He divides them into two main orders, ‘direct and indirect,’ both ‘founded on pain and pleasure.’ The direct passions are enumerated as ‘desire and aversion, grief and joy, hope and fear, along with volition’ or will. These ‘arise from good and evil’ (which are the same as pleasure and pain) ‘most naturally and with least preparation.’ ‘Desire arises from good, aversion from evil, considered simply.’ They become will or volition, ‘when the good may be attained or evil avoided by any action of the mind or body’—will being simply ‘the internal impression we feel and are conscious of when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body or new perception of our mind.’ ‘When good is certain or probable it produces joy’ (which is described also as a pleasure produced by pleasure or by the imagination of pleasure); ‘when it is uncertain, it gives rise to hope.’ To these the corresponding opposites are grief and fear. We must suppose them to be distinguished from desire and aversion as being what he elsewhere calls ‘pure emotions’; such as do not, like desires, ‘immediately excite us to action.’ Given such an immediate impression of pleasure or pain as excites a ‘distinct passion’ of one or other of these kinds, and supposing it to ‘arise from an object related to ourselves or others,’ it excites mediately, through this relation, the new impressions of pride or humility, love or hatred—pride when the object is related to oneself, love when it is related to another person. These are indirect passions. They do not tend to displace the immediate impression which is the condition of their excitement, but being themselves agreeable give it additional force. ‘Thus a suit of fine clothes produces pleasure from their beauty; and this pleasure produces the direct passions, or the impressions of volition and desire. Again, when these clothes are considered as belonging to oneself, the double relation conveys to us the sentiment of pride, which is an indirect passion; and the pleasure which attends that passion returns back to the direct affections, and gives new force to our desire or volition, joy or hope.’ [1]
[1] Vol. II., pp. 214, 215. Cf. pp. 76, 90, 153 and 203. [Book II., part III., sec. IX.; part 1, sec. I; part I., sec. VI.; part II., sec. VI.; part III., sec. VI.]
Yet he admits ‘passions’ which produce pleasure, but proceed not from it
31. Alongside of the unqualified statement that ‘the passions, both direct and indirect, are founded on pain and pleasure,’ and the consequent theory of them, we find the curiously cool admission that ‘beside pain and pleasure, the direct passions frequently arise from a natural impulse or instinct, which is perfectly unaccountable. Of this kind is the desire of punishment to our enemies, and of happiness to our friends; hunger and lust, and a few other bodily appetites. These passions, properly speaking, produce good and evil, and proceed not from them like the other affections.’ [1] In this casual way appears the recognition of that difference of the desire for imagined pleasure from appetite proper on the one side, and on the other from desire determined by reason, which it is the point of Hume’s system to ignore. The question is, how many of the pleasures in which he finds the springs of human conduct are other than products of a desire which is not itself moved by pleasure, or emotions excited by objects which reason constitutes.
[1] P. 215. [Book II., part III., sec. IX.] The passage in the ‘Dissertation on the Passions’ (Vol. IV., ‘Dissertation on the Passions,’ sub init.), which corresponds to the one here quoted, throws light on the relation in which Hume’s later redaction of his theory stands to the earlier, as occasionally disguising, but never removing, its inconsistencies. ‘Some objects, by being naturally conformable or contrary to passion, excite an agreeable or painful sensation, and are thence called good or evil. The punishment of an adversary, by gratifying revenge, is good: the sickness of a companion, by affecting friendship, is evil.’ Here he avoids the inconsistency of admitting in so many words a ‘desire’ which is not for a pleasure. But the inconsistency really remains. What is the passion, the ‘conformability’ to which of an object in the supposed cases constitutes pleasure? Since it is neither an appetite (such as hunger), nor an emotion (such as pride), it remains that it is a desire, and a desire which, though the ‘gratification’ of it is a pleasure, cannot be a desire for that or any other pleasure.
Desire for objects, as he understands it, excluded by his theory of impressions and ideas.