1. The arguments for the system explaining the passion through the transition of related ideas and impressions are enough to persuade the reader, especially since the system itself is “so easy and natural.” But to put the system beyond doubt, some new experiments will be proposed and some already-made observations recalled.

2. The experiments will involve myself and another person of whom I am neither friend nor enemy. This is enough material to examine the passions of pride/humility, which have myself as the object and love/hatred, which have another person as the object.

3. We can place the for passions in a kind of square of opposition. The horizontal dimensions regard the object, so the top row will include pride and humility, the bottom love and hatred. The horiaontal relation is formed by the similarity of sensations involved, so that pride is connected with love and humility with hatred.

5. First Experiment. An object is presented with no relation to any of the passions, such as an ordinary stone which belongs to neither of us. It obviously will produce none of the passions. This holds for any object and any passion.

6. Second Experiment. Next, let the object stand in one of the relations, say the relation to myself. I own the stone. Am I thereby proud? We can say in advance of experience that no such passion is induced. The relation of ideas “operates secretly and calmly on the mind,” so that it would not be the kind of thing to produce a passion. Moreover, if it did produce one, it would produce both in equal degrees, and so they would cancel each other out. This a priori reasoning is confirmed by experience: no object which produces neither pleasure or pain will produce a passion.

7. Third Experiment. Now switch the relation to the other side, and let there be an object which causes an impression of pleasure but is not related to me or my companion. Again, the matter can be considered in advance of any experience, with the result that “the object will have a small, but uncertain connexion with the passions.” Unlike the transition between ideas, that between impressions is not “a cold and imperceptible one.” Moreover, it would not produce equal passions if it produced any. So something that might result in a passion of pride (for example) would be produced, but it would not be something “steady or durable,” not having a relation between ideas to make it constant. Hume concludes “from analogy, after ballancing these arguments” that an object without relation to the self or another person can produce a disposition that can turn into one of the passions in question, but that is all.

8. This reasoning is confirmed by experience, as when travelers in a beautiful foreign country can produce good humor, but not pride or love if it is not related to either of them. If the resulting good humor is not directed at an object that does have such a relation, all we have are “the overflowings of an elevate or humane disposition.” The case applies equally to bad humor and the passion of humility and hatred.

9. Fourth Experiment. We could use reason alone to convince us at this point that where the double relation is present, the passion will arise. But more experiments are invoked instead, to leave as little room as possible for doubt. Take virtue, which produces “a separate satisfaction.” If I related it to myself, a passion, on of pride, arises. “Its idea is related to that of self, the object of the passion: The sensation it causes resembles the sensation of the passion.” Removing either one side or the other destroys the passion. To further confirm this, Hume asks us to transfer the virtue to someone else. Then the passion will “wheel about.” Pride now only has the relation of impressions, but now there is a new double relation involving the idea of the other person. This experiment can be repeated, swinging the passion back and forth between pride and love. Now the same experiment can be tried with vice instead of virtue, where the agreeable impression is replaced by a disagreeable one. Vice incites the passions of humility and hatred, and the same oscillation with each other as we had with pride and love is produced.

10. The experiment can be extended to other qualities, such as beauty and deformity, riches and poverty, power and servitude. “Each of these objects runs the circle of the passions in the same manner, by a change of their relations.” The experiment is not changed no matter how we vary the order of these. There may be thought to be an exception in the case of esteem and contempt, which arise instead of love and hatred, respectively, in some cases. This will be explained later, in Section V.

11. Fifth Experiment. The experiments will gain greater authority if more detail is added. So now suppose that the other person is not indifferent with me, but related closely to me, say as a sibling. What is the effect of the double relation in this more complicated case?

12. First, Hume gives the prediction of his hypothesis. If the impression generated by the object is pleasurable, the passion of love results, and if it is painful, the passion of hatred results. Now the object of these passions, my brother, has a relation to me. Hence, what produces the passion of love for my brother produces as well the passion in pride in myself. Similarly, what produces the passion of hatred for my brother produces on of humility in myself. In this way, the original passion is “carried further” and is “transfused” to the second passion (or impression).

13. This prediction of a “new transition” by Hume’s system is confirmed by experience. “Nothing causes greater vanity than any shining quality in our relations; as nothing mortifies us more than their vice or infamy.”

14. Sixth Experiment. It would seem that the system should also predict that the transition work in the opposite direction. For example my brother is related to me just as I am related to my brother. So, if I have pride in myself, it would seem to have to be transferable into love of my brother. “Like causes must produce like effects.” But such is not the case: “by this change of situation, the whole chain is broke.” We have an asymmetry: “The transition from pride or humility to love or hatred is not so natural as from love or hatred to pride or humility.” The difficulty will be removed in the next three paragraphs.

15. The first point, which sets up the main solution, is to recognize that transitions in the imagination are generally from the obscure to the lively ideas, rather than vice versa. Now when our attention is fixed on ourselves, as in the case of pride, the idea is quite vivid, so much so as to “force itself, in a manner on our consideration” and to become “present to the mind on the smallest hint and most trivial relation.” Once we pay attention to ourselves, we tend to keep our attention fixed on ourselves.

16. Now the main difficulty can be solved. Consider the relative vivacity of the ideas of ourselves “of whom we are every moment conscious” and of other people related to us. The former are much stronger. So because the transition from the obscure to the strong is easy, the transfer of the passion is “smooth and open” as well. But because opposite transition is difficult, the transfer of the passion, say of pride, away from one’s self is difficult. “The easy or difficult transition of the imagination operates upon the passions, and facilitates or retards their transition; which is a clear proof, that the two faculties of the passions and imagination are connected together, and that the relations of ideas have an influence upon the affections.” When the association of ideas is blocked, the transmission of of the passions is blocked as well: the bare relation of ideas (as in the sibling relation) becomes irrelevant in such cases.

17. It may seem that there is in fact an easy transition from the idea of the self to that of others, as in the case of sympathy. But in fact, sympathy does not work this way. It is indeed a way of relating to others, but only when attention is not already paid to ourselves. The case at issue is one in which one has the passion of pride and therefore is paying attention to one’s self.

18. Seventh Experiment. Here, we are asked to hold the passion constant and consider how it is transferred to other objects. So if I am loving someone, how does my love transfer to an object related to the one I am loving? In principle, it should be more easily transferred than in the case where the passion changes, since now there is only one variable, the relation to the object. This is confirmed by instances everywhere.

19. But now a complication arises, because, there is an asymmetry in the ease of transference, depending on the type of relation holding between the objects. The transition is easier when we begin with the “more considerable” object and move to the less considerable (e.g. from a prince to his subjects) than vice versa. “Our passions, like other objects, descend with greater facility than they ascend.”

20. The problem can be seen from what was claimed in paragraph 15, that the imagination moves more easily from the obscure to the lively. And so “the very same reason, which determines the imagination to pass from remote to contiguous objects, with more facility than form contiguous to remote, causes it likewise to change with more ease, the less for the greater, than the greater for the less.” We take more notice of what has the greatest influence, e.g., in passing from the satellites of Jupiter to Jupiter, or provinces to capital, servant to master, etc. This underlies the practice of having wives take the name of their husbands. This principle is “sufficiently evident.”

21. With the passions, the movement is in the other direction. The passion of hatred directed toward an inferior does not pass upward to the superior. “These two phænomena appear contradictory, and require some attention to be reconcil’d.”

22. There must be something at work that overpowers the natural tendency of the imagination. It must lie in the impressions, as there is nothing else but ideas present to the mind. These impressions come in degrees. A weak passion may move nor more difficultly to its weaker contrary, than a weak passion may move to a stronger version of the same kind. In the latter case, it is as if we are dealing with two different persons, and so a number of intermediate degrees of passion need to be transversed to move from a weak to a strong passion.

23. It may be even harder to move from a strong passion to a weaker one, given that the weaker passion destroys the stronger one it replaces. But if we were to superimpose them on one another, then there is a very different effect. The weak passion does not add much to the stronger, but the stronger swamps the weaker one, “for which reason there is a closer connexion betwixt the great degree and the small, than betwixt the small degree and the great.”

24. A person of considerable importance produces a stronger impression, “fills and possess the mind much more than one, which has for its object a person we esteem of less consequence.” So the direction of the passions is opposite that of the imagination. “And as the affections are a more powerful principle than the imagination, no wonder they prevail over it, and draw the mind to their side.” There isn’t much change when we add hatred to the servant to that of the master, while there is a great deal of change when adding hatred of the master to that of the servant. “The strongest passion in this case takes the precedence; and the addition of the weaker making no considerable change on the disposition, the passage is by that means render’d more easy and natural betwixt them.”

25. An analogy is made with the treatment of the relations of ideas in the sixth experiment. Recall that there, the imagination rests on the vivid and blocks the transition to the obscure. This has an effect on the transition of passions, which keeps us from transferring pride to love. The same holds for passions, which are impressions. When we have a weak passion (hatred of the servant), it takes a great deal of force to move us to a stronger passion (hatred of the master).

26. So the tendencies of the imagination and the passions move in different directions. “The fancy passes with more facility from the less to the greater, than from the greater to the less: But on the contrary, a violent passion produces more easily a feeble, than that does a violent.” The passion prevails generally over the imagination. Suppose we have a violent passion, a love of the master. How does a feeble passion, love of the servant, get generated, apparently contrary to the direction of the imagination (from greater to less)? By none other than employing the imagination itself, as for example when the servant is in view, or when aiding the servant would be seen favorably by the master. In that case, the imagination supplies “another quality, which may counter-ballance that principle, from whence the opposition arises.” “If the imagination finds a difficulty in passing from greater to less, it finds an equal facility in passing from remote to contiguous, which brings the matter to an equality, and leaves the way open from the one passion to the other.”

27. Eighth Experiment. There is an exception to the rule established in the sixth experiment. This is when another person is the object that produces the passion of pride or humility. “For in that case, the imagination is necessitated to consider the person, nor can it possibly confine its view to ourselves.” Pride is transferred to love in cases where the other person approves of our conduct and character. Similarly, humility is transferred to hatred when someone disapproves of them. So although it has been established that it is difficult for the imagination to transfer from the contiguous to the remote, the fact that the person in question is the cause of the first passion (pride or hatred) facilitates the transfer. “This is not a contradiction, but an exception to the rule; and an exception that arises from the same reason with the rule itself.”

28. This exception confirms the rule. All eight experiments together employ the same principle, of the production of the passions pride/humility, love/hatred from a double relation of impression of ideas. The experiments are now summarized.

• An object without a relation to the person who would have the passion or to the object of the passions never produces that passion.
• An object without a relation to the object of the passions never produces that passion.
• An object without a relation to the person who would have the passion never produces the passion.
• The passion always varies in conformity to the relation to the object of the passion (one’s self or others)
• If the usual transition between impressions and ideas is blocked, so is the passion.
• This rule holds even when it appears not to. When there appear to be circumstances to block the transition, counter-balancing circumstances can be found to allow it.

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