G. J. Mattey’s Notes on Hume’s Treatise, Book 2, Part 2, Section 11

Notes on Hume’s Treatise

by G. J. Mattey

Book 2
Of the PASSIONS
PART 2
Of Love and Hatred.

Sect. 11. Of the amorous passion, or love betwixt the sexes.

This Section concludes the examination of mixed or compound passions, i.e., those which contain some element of love and hatred, begun in Section 9. At the end of this Section, the author offers his account of love between the sexes as a confirmation of his account of the origins of the passions of pride and humility, and love and hatred.

Hutcheson, in Section IV of his Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, classified “desire between the sexes” as a species of appetite that is independent of any opinion of the good of the object of desire.

1. The love between the sexes is the mixed passion that most deserves our attention, both “on account of its force and violence, as [well as] those curious principles of philosophy, for which it accords us an uncontestable argument.” The author finds it to be “plain” that there are three distinct impressions or passions that account for the amorous passion “in its most natural state.”

2. Sexual activity is obviously pleasurable, so long as it is not excessive. As such, it is strongly connected with other pleasurable emotions. Further, agreeable emotions such as “[j]oy, mirth, vanity, and kindness are all incentives to this desire; as well as music, dancing, wine, and good cheer.” Many disagreeable emotions are disincentives to sex. These include “sorrow, melancholy, poverty, humility.” The effects of these emotions allow us to conceive easily the connection between beauty and sex.

3. But this analogy is not the only basis for the connection. The author had established in Section 9 that “the parallel direction of the desires is a real relation, and no less than a resemblance in their sensation, produces a real connexion among them.” [In Section 9, the desires that were shown to be parallel in direction were those for the well-being of a loved-one and those for the well-being of a stranger.] People possess certain basic or “principal” desires such as hunger for food and desire for sex. Secondary desires are those required for fulfillment of the principal desires, such as the desire of eating or of having sexual relations. If an object has qualities that incline us to satisfy the secondary desire, it increases the intensity of the principal desire. And if an object’s qualities turn us away from the satisfaction of the secondary desire, it decreases the intensity of the principal desire. Beauty of food is a quality that inclines us toward eating, and this increases our hunger. Unattractive food, even what is the most delicious in the mouth, disinclines us toward eating and decreases our hunger. “All this is easily applicable to the appetite for generation.” [That is, a beautiful potential sexual partner inclines us toward sexual relations, which intensifies our primary desire for sex.]

4. The connection between the three factors, beauty, bodily appetite, and benevolence is furthered both by resemblance with respect to pleasurableness and the parallel desire for sex and what is beautiful. This connection makes the three “in a manner inseparable.” Experience shows that any of the three may come first, since each brings the others in tow. Someone who is “inflam⁏d with lust” will at least momentarily feel kindly toward his partner and regard him or her “as far more beautiful than ordinary.” Others start with “kindness and esteem for the wit of the merit of the person,” and sexual attitude and a sentiment of beauty follow. However, most commonly the starting-point is beauty. The reason is that it occupies a kind of middle position between bodily appetite, the crudest of the passions, and kindness, the most refined. “The love of beauty is plac’d in a just medium betwixt them, and partakes of both their natures: From whence it proceeds, that ’tis so singularly fitted to produce both.”

5. Any system, on any hypothesis, must adopt this account of love, so it is not peculiar to the system of the author. The three factors are directed at three different features of the other person, so they must be united by some relation. The three passions resemble one another with respect to pleasure, but this has been shown to be insufficient to account for how one leads to the other. There must be something else—a relation of ideas. [The ideas of the qualities of a person are connected, as the thought of the other’s kindness is connected to that of his or her beauty, etc.] The author announces that the requirement that both impressions and ideas play a role in the production of the passion of love between the sexes “is a sensible proof of the double relation of impressions and ideas.” This one instance, he proclaims, is enough to show that the relation is required for the other passions.

6. The account of love between the sexes is offered as providing a further illustration of the general theory of the indirect passions of pride and humility, and love and hatred. The author had argued in his treatment of those passions that the object of the passions alone (that is, the self or another person) is not sufficient to induce them, since the same object may give rise to contradictory passions (See Part I, Section 2, paragraph 2, and Part II, Section I, paragraph 3). The mind is so constituted that when it has a passion, it is turned toward the view of a certain object. But that passion must be triggered by another impression, which is related to the first, and which parallels a relation between the ideas of the cause of the original impression and the object of the resultant passion. In most cases, the cause of the passion is a quality of the object and thus distinct from it. But in the case of sexual passion, “Sex is not only the object, but also the cause of the appetite.” That is, when we have sexual appetite, we turn our view toward sex, but this view in turn arouses the appetite. Yet this feedback mechanism is not sufficient to sustain sexual appetite, because it “loses its force by too great frequency.” So some new impulse needed, and this impulse comes from the beauty of the person who is the object of the appetite. This is a case of a double relation of impressions and ideas. [The idea of the beauty of the person is connected to that of the person, and the pleasurable impression of the beauty is connected in parallel to a pleasurable impression of the person.] A double relation is always needed when the cause of the passion and its object are distinct. The author believes that it needed even more when the object of the passion has no determinate cause distinct from itself. [That is, the double relation caused by beauty is needed to supplement the sexual passion which originally only inflamed itself.]

The full text of the corresponding part of Of the Passions is found at the close of Section III.