It implies a self-consciousness not reducible to impressions.
40. Upon this it must be remarked that the inference from the external signs of an affection, according to Hume’s doctrine of inference, can only mean that certain impressions of the other person’s words and gestures call up the ideas of their ‘usual attendants’; which, again, must mean either that they convey the belief in certain exciting circumstances experienced by the other man, and the expectation of certain acts to follow upon his words and gestures; or else that they suggest to the spectator the memory of certain like manifestations on his own part and through these of the emotion which in his own case was their antecedent. Either way, the spectator’s idea of the other person’s affection is in no sense a copy of it, or that affection in a fainter form. If it is an idea of an impression of reflection at all, it is of such an impression as experienced by the spectator himself, and determined, as Hume admits, by his consciousness of himself; nor could any conveyance of vivacity to the idea make it other than that impression. How it should become to the spectator consciously at once another’s impression and his own, remains unexplained. Hume only seems to explain it by means of the equivocation lurking in the phrase, ‘idea of another’s affection.’ The reader, not reflecting that, according to the copying theory, so far as the idea is a copy of anything in the other, it can only be a copy of certain ‘external signs, &c.,’ and so far as it is a copy of an affection, only of an affection experienced by the man who has the idea, thinks of it as being to the spectator the other’s affection minus a certain amount of vivacity—the restoration of which will render it an impression at once his own and the other’s. It can in truth only be so in virtue (a) of an interpretation of words and gestures, as related to a person, which no suggestion by impressions of their usual attendants can account for, and in virtue (b) of there being such a conceived identity, or unity in difference, between the spectator’s own person and the person of the other that the same impression, in being determined by his consciousness of himself, is determined also by his consciousness of the other as an ‘alter ego.’ Thus sympathy, according to Hume’s account of it, so soon as that account is rationalized, is found to involve the determination of pleasure and pain, not merely by self-consciousness, but by a self-consciousness which is also self-identification with another. If self-consciousness cannot in any of its functions be reduced to an impression or succession of impressions, least of all can it in this. On the other hand, if it is only through its constitutive action, its reflection of itself, upon successive impressions of sense that these become the permanent objects which we know, we can understand how by a like action on certain impressions of reflection, certain emotions and desires, it constitutes those objects of interest which we love as ourselves.
Ambiguity in his account of benevolence: It is a desire and therefore has pleasure for its object. What pleasure?
41. Pride, love, and sympathy, then, are the motives which Hume must have granted him, if his moral theory is to march. Sympathy is not only necessary to his explanation of that most important form of pride which is the motive to a man in maintaining a character with his neighbours when ‘nothing is to be gained by it’—nothing, that is, beyond the immediate pleasure it gives—and of all forms of ‘love,’ except those of which the exciting cause lies in the pleasures of beauty and sexual appetite: he finds in it also the ground of benevolence. Where he first treats of benevolence, indeed, this does not appear. Unlike pride and humility, we are told, which ‘are pure emotions of the soul, unattended with any desire, and not immediately exciting us to action, love and hatred are not completed within themselves … Love is always followed by a desire of the happiness of the person beloved, and an aversion to his misery; as hatred produces a desire of the misery, and an aversion to the happiness, of the person hated.’ [1] This actual sequence of ‘benevolence’ and ‘anger’ severally upon love and hatred is due, it appears, to ‘an original constitution of the mind’ which cannot be further accounted for. That benevolence is no essential part of love is clear from the fact that the latter passion ‘may express itself in a hundred ways, and may subsist a considerable time, without our reflecting on the happiness of its object.’ Doubtless, when we do reflect on it, we desire the happiness; but, ‘if nature had so pleased, love might have been unattended with any such desire.’ [2] So far, the view given tallies with what we have already quoted from the summary account of the direct and indirect passions, where the ‘desire of punishment to our enemies and happiness to our friends’ is expressly left outside the general theory of the passions as a ‘natural impulse wholly unaccountable,’ a ‘direct passion’ which yet does not proceed from pleasure.’ With his instinct for consistency, however, Hume could scarcely help seeking to assimilate this alien element to his definition of desire as universally for pleasure; and accordingly, while the above view of benevolence is never in so many words given up, an essentially different one appears a little further on, which by help of the doctrine of sympathy at once makes the connection of benevolence with love more accountable, and brings it under the general definition of desire. ‘Benevolence,’ we are there told, ‘is an original pleasure arising from the pleasure of the person beloved, and a pain proceeding from his pain, from which correspondence of impressions there arises a subsequent desire of his pleasure and aversion to his pain.’ [3]
[1] Vol. II., p. 153. [Book II., part II., sec. VI.]
[2] Vol. II., p. 154. [Book II., part II., sec. VI.]
[3] Vol. II., p. 170. [Book II., part II., sec. IX.] Compare Vol. II., ‘Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,’ Appendix II., note 3, where ‘general benevolence,’ also called ‘humanity,’ is identified with ‘sympathy.’ ‘Benevolence is naturally divided into two kinds, the general and the particular. The first is, where we have no friendship, or connection, or esteem for the person, but feel only a general sympathy with him, or a compassion for his pains, and a congratulation with his pleasures,’ &c. &c.
Pleasure of sympathy with the pleasure of another.
42. Now, strictly construed, this passage seems to efface the one clear distinction of benevolence that had been previously insisted on—that it is a desire, namely, as opposed to a pure emotion. If benevolence is an ‘original pleasure arising from the pleasure of the person beloved,’ it is identical with love, so far as sympathy is an exciting cause of love, instead of being distinguished from it as desire from emotion. We must suppose, however, that the sentence was carelessly put together, and that Hume did not really mean to identify benevolence with the pleasure spoken of in the former part of it (for which his proper term is simply sympathy), but with the desire for that pleasure, spoken of in the latter part. In that case we find that benevolence forms no exception to the general definition of desire. It is desire for one’s own pleasure, but for a pleasure received through the communication by sympathy of the pleasure of another. In like manner, the sequence of benevolence upon love, instead of being an unaccountable ‘disposition of nature,’ would seem explicable, as merely the ordinary sequence upon a pleasant emotion of a desire for its renewal. Though it be not strictly the pleasant emotion of love, but that of sympathy, for which benevolence is the desire, yet if sympathy is necessary to the excitement of love, it will equally follow that benevolence attends on love. Pleasure sympathised with, we may suppose, first excites the secondary emotion of love, and afterwards, when reflected on, that desire for its continuance or renewal, which is benevolence. That love ‘should express itself in a hundred ways, and subsist a considerable time’ without any consciousness of benevolence, will merely be the natural relation of emotion to desire. When a pleasure is in full enjoyment, it cannot be so reflected on as to excite desire; and thus, if benevolence is desire for that pleasure in the pleasure of another, which is an exciting cause of love, the latter emotion must naturally subsist and express itself for some time before it reaches the stage in which reflection on its cause, and with it benevolent desire, ensues.
All ‘passions’ equally interested or disinterested: Confusion arises from use of ‘passion’ alike for desire and emotion. Of this Hume avails himself in his account of active pity.