43. This rationale, however, of the relation between love and benevolence is not explicitly given by Hume himself. He nowhere expressly withdraws the exception, made in favour of benevolence, to the rule that all desire is for pleasure—an exception which, once admitted, undermines his whole system—or tells us in so many words that benevolence is desire for pleasure to oneself in the pleasure of another. In an important note to the Essays, [1] indeed, he distinctly puts benevolence on the same footing with such desires as avarice or ambition. ‘A man is no more interested when he seeks his own glory, than when the happiness of his friend is the object of his wishes; nor is he any more disinterested when he sacrifices his own ease and quiet to public good, than when he labours for the gratification of avarice or ambition.’ … ‘Though the satisfaction of these latter passions gives us enjoyment, yet the prospect of this enjoyment is not the cause of the passion, but, on the contrary, the passion is antecedent to the enjoyment, and without the former the latter could not possibly exist.’ In other words, if ‘passion’ means desire—and, as applied to emotion, the designation ‘interested’ or ‘disinterested’ has no meaning—every passion is equally disinterested in the sense of presupposing an ‘enjoyment’ a pleasant emotion, antecedent to that which consists in its satisfaction; but at the same time equally interested in the sense of being a desire for such enjoyment. Whether from a wish to find acceptance, however, or because forms of man’s good-will to man forced themselves on his notice which forbade the consistent development of his theory, Hume is always much more explicit about the disinterestedness of benevolence in the former sense than about its interestedness in the latter. [2] Accordingly he does not avail himself of such an explanation of its relation to love as that above indicated, which by avowedly reducing benevolence to a desire for pleasure, while it simplified his system, might have revolted the ‘common sense’ even of the eighteenth century. He prefers—as his manner is, when he comes upon a question which he cannot face—to fall back on a ‘disposition of nature’ as the ground of the ‘conjunction’ of benevolence with love. There is a form of benevolence, however, which would seem as little explicable by such natural conjunction as by reduction to a desire for sympathetic pleasure. How is it that active good-will is shown towards those whom, according to Hume’s theory of love, it should be impossible to love—towards those with whom intercourse is impossible, or from whom, if intercourse is possible, we can derive no such pleasure as is supposed necessary to excite that pleasant emotion, but rather such pain, in sympathy with their pain, as according to the theory should excite hatred? To this question Hume in effect finds an answer in the simple device of using the same terms, ‘pity’ and ‘compassion,’ alike for the painful emotion produced by the spectacle of another’s pain and for ‘desire for the happiness of another and aversion to his misery.’ [3] According to the latter account of it, pity is already ‘the same desire’ as benevolence, though ‘proceeding from a different principle,’ and thus has a resemblance to the love with which benevolence is conjoined—a ‘resemblance not of feeling or sentiment but of tendency or direction.’ [4] Hence, whereas ‘pity’ in the former sense would make us hate those whose pain gives us pain, by understanding it in the latter sense we can explain how it leads us to love them, on the principle that one resembling passion excites another.
[1] ‘Inquiry concerning Human Understanding,’ note to sec. 1. In the editions after the second, this note was omitted.
[2] Attention should be called to a passage at the end of the account of ‘self-love’ in the Essays, where he seems to revert to the view of benevolence as a desire not originally produced by pleasure, but productive of it, and thus passing into a secondary stage in which it is combined with desire for pleasure. He suggests tentatively that ‘from the original frame of our temper we may feel a desire for another’s happiness or good, which, by means of that affection, becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued from the combined motives of benevolence and self-enjoyment.’ The passage might have been written by Butler. (Vol. IV., ‘Inquiry concerning Principles of Morals,’ Appendix II.)
[3] Book II., part 2, secs. 7 and 9. Within a few lines of each other will be found the statements (a) that ‘pity is an uneasiness arising from the misery of others,’ and (b) that ‘pity is desire for the happiness of another,’ &c.
[4] ‘Dissertation on the Passions’ (in the Essays), sec. 3, sub-sec. 5.
Explanation of apparent conflict between reason and passion.
44. We are now in a position to review the possible motives of human action according to Hume. Reason, constituting no objects, affords no motives. ‘It is only the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.’ [1] To any logical thinker who accepted Locke’s doctrine of reason, as having no other function but to ‘lay in order intermediate ideas,’ this followed of necessity. It is the clearness with which Hume points out that, as it cannot move, so neither can it restrain, action, that in this regard chiefly distinguishes him from Locke. The check to any passion, he points out, can only proceed from some counter-motive, and such a motive reason, ‘having no original influence,’ cannot give. Strictly speaking, then, a passion can only be called unreasonable, as accompanied by some false judgment, which on its part must consist in ‘disagreement of ideas, considered as copies, with those objects which they represent;’ and ‘even then it is not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment.’ It is nothing against reason—not, as Locke had inadvertently said, a wrong judgment—‘to prefer my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater.’ The only unreasonableness would lie in supposing that ‘my own acknowledged lesser good,’ being preferred, could be attained by means that would not really lead to it. Hence ‘we speak not strictly when we talk of the combat of reason and passion.’ They can in truth never oppose each other. The supposition. that they do so arises from a confusion between ‘calm passions’ and reason—a confusion founded on the fact that the former ‘produce little emotion in the mind, while the operation of reason produces none at all.’ [2] Calm passions, undoubtedly, do often conflict with the violent ones and even prevail over them, and thus, as the violent passion causes most uneasiness, it is untrue to say with Locke [3] that it is the most pressing uneasiness which always determines action. The calmness of a passion is not to be confounded with weakness, nor its violence with strength. A desire may be calm either because its object is remote, or because it is customary. In the former case, it is true, the desire is likely to be relatively weak; but in the latter case, the calmer the desire, the greater is likely to be its strength, since the repetition of a desire has the twofold effect, on the one hand of diminishing the ‘sensible emotion’ that accompanies it, on the other hand of ‘bestowing a facility in the performance of the action’ corresponding to the desire, which in turn creates a new inclination or tendency that combines with the original desire. [4]
[1] Vol. II., p. 195. [Book II., part III., sec. III.]
[2] Vol. II., pp. 195, 196. [Book II., part III., sec. III.]
[3] Above, sec. 3.