G. J. Mattey's Notes on Hume's Treatise, Book 2, Part 1, Section 8

Notes on Hume’s Treatise

by G. J. Mattey

Book 2
Of the PASSIONS
PART 1
Of pride and humility.

Sect. 8. Of beauty and deformity.

Having presented in the first six Sections his general explanation of the origins of the passions of pride and humility, the author in the last section showed how in particular virtue induces pride and vice humility. The present section continues his examination of specific causes of these passions.

Francis Hutcheson thought that human beings have a sense of beauty. (See An Inquiry into the Original of OUr Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 1725. The sight of beautiful objects, on his view, gives rise to the passion of joy, which the author has distinguished in Section 6 from that of pride. In beholding a regular Building we have the Sensation of Beauty; but upon our apprehending ourselves as possessed of it, or that we can procure this pleasant Sensation when we please, we feel the Affection of Joy (Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, 1728, Section 2. Hutcheson thought that one species of pride is a desire for honor and power, which is the same desire that constitutes ambition (Section III).

1. The author applies his account of the origin of the indirect passions of pride and humility to beauty and deformity of the body. [According to the explanation, the idea of the cause of the passion must be related to that of the object of the passion, and in consequence, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the impression of the cause is transferred to the impression of the object.] Whether or not one believes that the body is a part of ourselves, it must be admitted that the body is very closely related to ourselves. [So, the idea of the body is closely related to the idea of the self.] If the impression of one’s body is pleasant or agreeable, the passion of pride will arise if the agreeableness or disagreeableness is transfered to the impression of the self. The author claims that the relation between the body and the self is near enough to guarantee that this transfer will take place. Specifically, the impression of beauty of gives a peculiar delight and satisfaction, while that of deformity of our body produces pain, no matter what object is beautiful or deformed. This supplies all the elements for the production of the passions of pride and humility, respectively. When we find beauty plac’d upon our own bodies, the pleasure we feel gives rise to a pleasurable feeling about ourselves, which is the passion of pride. When we find our body to be deformed, we feel dissatisfied with ourselves, which is the passion of humility. No wonder, then, our own beauty becomes an object of pride and deformity of humility.

2. The case of pride and humility helps confirm the account of the passions by showing that the two would not arise unless there were the two relations of impressions and ideas. But the author believes that he can turn it into a stronger and more convincing argument. He begins by laying out all the hypotheses, which have been form’d either by philosophy or common reason, to explain the difference betwixt beauty and deformity. These are that beauty is such an order and construction of parts as . . . is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfaction to the soul by one of the following means:

3. Although the author finds the argument of the last paragraph just and decisive, he hopes to give it greater authority by considering the consequences of its falsehood. Even if the production of pleasure and pain are not the essence of beauty and deformity, the former sensations are either inseparable from the latter qualities to the extent that it is hard to conceive of the two apart from each other. Now consider the consequence of this close connection between the qualities of beauty and deformity and the impressions of pleasure and pain. In the first place, natural beauty and moral beauty [beauty of the soul, as with virtue, etc.] have in common only the power to produce pleasure. The author has laid it down as a principle that common effects have a common cause [in Part I, Section 15. A derivative principle applies here: where several different objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common amongst them.] Both natural and moral beauty are causes of pride, so they must have quality in common, and it is plain that the pleasure must in both cases be the real and influencing cause of the passion. In the second place, the beauty of our own bodies and that of external and foreign objects is distinguished only by the closer relation of the form to ourselves. Since this is the only difference between the two, it must account for all of the differences of the effects of the beauty in these two kinds of objects. One such difference is that the beauty of one’s body instills pride while that of an external object does not. [So lack of a close relation blocks the production of pride.] If we combine these considerations, we find that we can account for both the production and non-production of the passion by different kinds of objects. This yields the author’s system: pleasure, as a related or resembling impression, when plac’d on a related object, by a natural transition, produces pride; and its contrary, humility. Experience [of the effects of the different sorts of beauty], then, seems to confirm the system. But more arguments are to come.

4. The strength and force of a body, as well as its beauty, produce pride. Insofar as excellence in strength is a kind of power, desire to excel in strength is a species of desire for power, which is to say, of ambition. When we explain ambition, we will be able to account for the production of pride from the strength and force of the body. [The explanation might be as follows: we desire strength insofar as strength is a source of pleasure. Attainment of strength is a source of pride. The pride we take in our strength is due to the pleasure it affords us.]

5. Aside from strength, all other bodily accomplishments, whether useful, beautiful, or surprising, give rise to pride, and what is useless deformed or unsurprising gives rise to humility. The only thing that utility, beauty and surprise have in common is their production of a separate pleasure. The pleasure, therefore, with the relation to self must be the cause of the passion.

6. We may leave aside the question of whether beauty is to be found in objects and is not merely the production of pleasure. Surprise is certainly no more than a pleasure arising from novelty. As such, it is not, properly speaking, a quality in any object, but merely a passion or impression in the soul. Thus, the pride resulting from having or doing something surprising must arise from the impression of novelty alone [with the idea of the cause of that impression being closely related to the idea of the self]. And it [the pride] arises so naturally, that nothing in us or belonging to us that produces surprise fails to excite pride. Examples of surprising things in us or belonging to us are our adventures, escapes, and dangers to which we have been exposed. The production of pride by surprise explains why common people lie, either by making up accounts of things that never happened or by claiming of what happened to others really happened to them, though there was no connection between the two. So either they make up things of which to be proud, or if their imaginations are not fertile enough, they claim the actions of others.

7. We can draw two consequences from this phenomenon of the invention or appropriation of tall stories to produce a feeling of pride. Comparing the two together according to the known rules, by which we judge of cause and effect in anatomy, natural philosophy, and other sciences, will be an undeniable argument for that influence of the double relations above-mention’d. [These rules are found in Part I, Section 15.] The first consequence is that what produces pride in the case of surprise is nothing in the object itself, but only an impression of pleasure derived from the object. The quality that produces the pride is nothing more than the power of producing a pleasure. The second consequence is that the pride is produced in part by a relation of ideas [of the object and the self]. If that relation were to be cut off, there would be no pride. So we are prideful when we hear the tale of surprising adventure in which we have participated but not of such an adventure that did not include us. What farther proof can be desir’d for the present system?

8. The author notes that there is only a single objection to this account of the production of pride on the basis of features of our body. Even though health of the body is most agreeable and sickness most disagreeable, they possession of the former does not ordinarily instill pride, nor does the affliction of the latter instill humility. The objection can be met by appeal to the second and fourth limitation of his general account of the origins of pride and humility [given in Section 6]. The second limitation was that in order to produce pride and humility, an object must be peculiar to ourselves. The fourth was that it is also required that the object be constant and enduring relative to our own duration, not inconstant and relatively fleeting. Health and sickness vary enormously among people, and nobody is either solely or certainly in good health or bad. As a result, these accidental blessings and calamities are in a manner separated from us, and are never consider’d as connected with our being and existence. We can see that this account is correct by considering cases where sickness does instill humility, such as when a sickness becomes so established in our body that there is no hope of recovery from it. This is evident in the elderly, who are embarrassed by their old age and afflictions to the extent that they try to cover them up as much as they can. By contrast, a young person is not ashamed of every cold or headache that he has. However, everyone recognizes that they are subject at any moment of our lives to infirmities such as this, and reflection on this condition is what most tears down our pride and makes us think ill of our nature. This sufficiently proves that bodily pain and sickness are in themselves proper causes of humility. On the other hand, we do not tend to dwell on the general human condition to the point of being humbled by it at all times. This is the effect of the custom of estimating every thing by comparison more than by its intrinsic worth and value. As a result, we tend to think of our own merit and character as good relative to the possible calamities that might befall us.

9. A final observation regarding the relation of the state of the body to the passions of pride and humility concerns the shame we feel our maladies that may affect other people, and are either dangerous or disagreeable to them. Epilepsy causes shame because it instills horror in others, some diseases are communicable to others, and some are passed on to succeeding generations. When we judge ourselves, we always consider the sentiments of others. This kind of consideration of others’ sentiment has already been noted and will be more evidently in play, as well as being explained, in what follows. [The discussion of the pride we have when recounting our adventures to others is an example of the importance of the consideration of others’s sentiments to the passion of pride. In Section 11 below, the notion of sympathy, the communication of others’s pleasures and pains, is introduced and accounted for in the context of the author’s system.]

The topic of beauty as the cause of pride and deformity of humility is discussed in Section II, item 7 of the second Dissertation. The author notes that beauty, whether of an animate or inanimate body, gives us a peculiar delight and satisfaction, while deformity produces pain, upon whatever subject it may be placed. If placed upon ourselves, beauty or deformity produce pride and humility, respectively. The reason is that they have all the circumstances requisite to produce a perfect transition, according to the present theory. [That is, according to Hume’s theory, the impression of beauty is an agreeable one and is related to an agreeable impression of the self in parallel to the relation of the idea of the beautiful body to the self. The transition in both cases meets with no impediments.] Hume speculates that the very essence of beauty consists in its power of producing pleasure. If so, then all the effects of beauty stem from that power, which would account for the fact that beauty is a universal source of pride. Other bodily accomplishments, such as the useful or the surprising, also produce pride (and their opposites humility). They have nothing in common other than producing pleasure or pain. [This corroborates the view that it is the production of pleasure that is the cause of pride and the production of pain that is the cause of humility. Our vanity is the origin of vulgar lying about our imaginary surprising adventures. Belief in these produces a feeling of pleasure, and between that passion, and the sentiment of pleasure, there is always a close connexion.