[4] Vol. II. pp. 198-200. [Book II., part III., sec. IV.] It will be found that here Hume might have stated his case much more succinctly by avoiding the equivocal use of ‘passion’ at once for ‘desire’ and ‘emotion.’ When a ‘passion’ is designated as ‘calm’ or ‘violent,’ ‘passion’ means emotion. When the terms ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ are applied to it, it means ‘desire.’ Since of the strength of any desire there is in truth no test but the resulting action, and habit facilitates action, if we will persist in asking the idle question about the relative strength of desires, we must suppose that the most habitual is the strongest.
A ‘reasonable’ desire means one that excites little emotion:
Enumeration of possible motives.
45. The distinction, then, between ‘reasonable’ and ‘unreasonable’ desires—and it is only desires that can be referred to when will, or the determination to action, is in question—in the only sense in which Hume can admit it, is a distinction not of objects but of our situation in regard to them. The object of desire in every case—whether near or remote, whether either by its novelty or by its contrariety to other passions it excites more or less ‘sensible emotion’—is still ‘good,’ i.e. pleasure. The greater the pleasure in prospect, the stronger the desire. [1] The only proper question, then, according to Hume, as to the pleasure which in any particular case is an object of desire will be whether it is (a) an immediate impression of sense, or (b) a pleasure of pride, or (c) one of sympathy. Under the first head, apparently, he would include pleasures incidental to the satisfaction of appetite, and pleasures corresponding to the several senses—not only the smells and tastes we call ‘sweet,’ but the sights and sounds we call ‘beautiful.’ [2] Pleasures of this sort, we must suppose, are the ultimate ‘exciting causes’ [3] of all those secondary ones, which are distinguished from their ‘exciting causes’ as determined by the ideas either of self or of another thinking person—the pleasures, namely, of pride and sympathy. Sympathetic pleasure, again, will be of two kinds, according as the pleasure in the pleasure of another does or does not excite the further pleasure of love for the other person. If the object desired is none of these pleasures, nor the means to them, it only remains for the follower of Hume to suppose that it is ‘pleasure in general’—the object of ‘self love.’
[1] Cf p. 198. [Book II., part III., sec. IV.] ‘The same good, when near, will cause a violent passion, which, when remote, produces only a calm one.’ The expression, here, is obviously inaccurate. It cannot be the same good in Hume’s sense, i.e. equally pleasant in prospect, when remote as when near.
[2] No other account of pleasure in beauty can be extracted from Hume than this—that it is either a ‘primary impression of sense,’ so far co-ordinate with any pleasant taste or smell that but for an accident of language the term ‘beautiful’ might be equally applicable to these, or else a pleasure in that indefinite anticipation of pleasure which is called the contemplation of utility.
[3] Ultimate because according to Hume the immediate exciting cause of a pleasure of pride may be one of love, and vice versa. In that case, however, a more remote ‘exciting cause’ of the exciting pleasure must be found in some impressions of sense, if the doctrine that these are the sole ‘original impressions’ is to be maintained.
If pleasure sole motive, what is the distinction of self-love? Its opposition to disinterested desires, as commonly understood, disappears: it is desire for pleasure in general.
46. Anyone reading the ‘Treatise on Human Nature’ alongside of Shaftesbury or Butler would be surprised to find that while sympathy and benevolence fill a very large place in it, self-love ‘eo nomine’ has a comparatively small one. At first, perhaps, he would please himself with thinking that he had come upon a more ‘genial’ system of morals. The true account of the matter, however, he will find to be that, whereas with Shaftesbury and his followers the notion of self-love was really determined by opposition to those desires for other objects than pleasure, in the existence of which they really believed, however much the current psychology may have embarrassed their belief, on the other hand with Hume’s explicit reduction of all desire to desire for pleasure self-love loses the significance which this opposition gave it, and can have no meaning except as desire for ‘pleasure in general’ in distinction from this or that particular pleasure. Passages from the Essays may be adduced, it is true, where self-love is spoken of under the same opposition under which Shaftesbury and Hutcheson conceived of it, but in these, it will be found, advantage is taken of the ambiguity between ‘emotion’ and ‘desire,’ covered by the term ‘passion.’ That there are sympathetic emotions—pleasures occasioned by the pleasure of others—is, no doubt, as cardinal a point in Hume’s system as that all desire is for pleasure to self; but between such emotions and self-love there is no co-ordination. No emotion, as he points out, determines action directly, but only by exciting desire; which with him can only mean that the image of the pleasant emotion excites desire for its renewal. In other words, no emotion amounts to volition or will. Self-love, on the other hand, if it means anything, means desire and a possibly strongest desire, or will. It can thus be no more determined by opposition to generous or sympathetic emotions than can these by opposition to hunger and thirst. Hume, however, when he insists on the existence of generous ‘passions’ as showing that self-love is not our uniform motive, though he cannot consistently mean more than that desire for ‘pleasure in general,’ or desire for the satisfaction of desire, is not the uniform motive—which might equally be shown (as he admits) by pointing to such self-regarding ‘passions’ as love of fame, or such appetites as hunger—is yet apt, through the reader’s interpretation of ‘generous passions’ as desires for something other than pleasure, to gain credit for recognising a possibility of living for others, in distinction from living for pleasure, which was in truth as completely excluded by his theory as by that of Hobbes. If he himself meant to convey any other distinction between self-love and the generous passions than one which would hold no less between it and every emotion whatever, it was through a fresh intrusion upon him of that notion of benevolence, as a ‘desire not founded on pleasure,’ which was in too direct contradiction to the first principles of his theory to be acquiesced in. [1]
[1] Cf. II. p. 197 [Book II., part III., sec. III.], where, speaking of ‘calm desires,’ he says they ‘are of two kinds; either certain instincts originally implanted in our natures, such as benevolence and resentment, the love of life, and kindness to children; or the general appetite to good and aversion to evil, considered merely as such.’ This seems to imply a twofold distinction of the ‘general appetite to good’ (a) from desires for particular pleasures, which are commonly not calm, and (b) from certain desires, which resemble the ‘general appetite’ in being calm but are not for pleasure at all. See above, sec. 31. In that section of the Essays where ‘self-love’ is expressly treated of, there is a still clearer appearance of the doctrine, that there are desires (in that instance called ‘mental passions’) which have not pleasure for their object any more than have such ‘bodily wants’ as hunger and thirst. From these self-love, as desire for pleasure, is distinguished, though, when the pleasure incidental to their satisfaction is discovered and reflected on, it is supposed to combine with them. (Vol. IV. Appendix on Self-love, near the end. See above, sec. 43 and note.)
This amounts, in fact, to a complete withdrawal from Hume’s original position and the adoption of one which is most clearly stated in Hutcheson’s posthumous treatise—the position, namely, that we begin with a multitude of ‘particular’ or ‘violent’ desires, severally ‘terminating upon objects’ which are not pleasures at all, and that, as reason developes, these gradually blend with, or are superseded by, the ‘calm’ desire for pleasure; so that moral growth means the access of conscious pleasure-seeking. This in effect seems to be Butler’s view, and Hutcheson reckons it ‘a lovely representation of human nature,’ though he himself holds that benevolence may exist, not merely as one of the ‘particular desires’ controlled by self-love, but as itself a ‘calm’ and controlling principle, co-ordinate with self-love. (‘System of Moral Philosophy,’ Vol. I. p. 51, &c.)