G. J. Mattey’s Notes on Hume’s Treatise, Book 2, Part 3, Section 8

Notes on Hume’s Treatise

by G. J. Mattey

Book 2
OF THE PASSIONS
PART 3
Of the will and direct passions.

Sect. 8. The same subject continu’d.

In the previous Section, the author considered the effects upon the direct passions of nearness and distance in space and time. He had explained why more distant objects have a weaker effect, as the idea of them in the imagination is weaker, and it is the idea that gives rise to the passion. He had also explained two asymmetries: that distance in time weakens the passions more than that in space, and that distance in past time weakens them more than distance in future time. In the present Section, he will consider three additional phenomena, which in a way seem to work in the reverse direction.

2. It is a fact that the soul is expanded and delighted by the contemplation of any greatness, either in spatial extension or in quantity of time. No matter how beautiful an object, a sufficiently more extensive or longer-lasting one will be more admired. Examples are a “wide plain, the ocean, eternity, a succession of several ages.” This fact applies to distant objects because when it conceives them, the mind reflects on the greatness of the distance and receives satisfaction from this magnitude. The relation between the distance and the object makes for an easy transition between the idea of the distance and that of the object, and the passion of admiration accompanying the idea of the distance “naturally diffuses itself over the distant object.” The object itself need not be distant, so long as it generates the idea of distance, as is the case with our admiration of a distant traveler who is in the same room as us. Another example is a medal from ancient Greece that sits in our display case; it is admired although nearby. “Here the object, by a natural transition, conveys our view to the distance; and the admiration, which arises from that distance, by another natural transition, returns back to the object.”

3. Having explained how esteem increases with the idea of distance, the author turns to an explanation of why distance in time has a considerably greater effect than distance in space. Here, he gives two examples. An artifact from ancient times is more valued than one from far away, such as a table from Japan. We are very concerned with the goings-on of ancient people, to the extent that we try hard, to no avail, to discover their histories. And we would prefer doing that to making a voyage to a far-off country, where “the character, learning, and government” of its people could be discovered with certainty. “I shall be oblig’d to make a digress in order to explain this phænomenon.”

4. The author begins with “a quality very observable in human nature.” Any challenge that is not hopeless does not discourage and intimidate us, but rather “inspires us with a more than ordinary grandeur and magnanimity.” The collection of our forces to overcome the opposition is invigorating and elevates the soul in a way that nothing else can. If something compliantly yields to our strength, we do not feel it, but if it opposes our strength, it makes us aware of it.

5. The opposite effect holds as well: when a soul “is filled with courage and magnanimity,” it seeks out opposition in a way. The author quotes a verse from the Roman poet Virgil’s Aeneid, which describes a boy’s thirst for combat with a wild animal in order to prove himself.

Impatiently he views the feeble prey,
Wishing some nobler beast to cross his way,
And rather would the tusky boar attend,
Or see the tawny lion downward bend.

6. The author maintains that in general, whatever supports and fills the passions is agreeable to us, and what weakens and enfeebles them is disagreeable. Since opposition is supportive and fulfilling, it is agreeable, and since easiness is weakening and enfeebling, it is disagreeable. This explains why the mind, in certain dispositions, desires the former, and is averse to the latter.

7. Opposition and facility have an effect on the imagination as well as on the passions. This claim is illustrated by the way in which heights and depths influence the imagination. A great height elevates the imagination and gives a feeling of superiority over what is below it, and in turn a a sublime and strong imagination conveys the idea of ascent and elevation. Thus, we associate the higher with the good and the lower with the bad, as in the case of heaven and hell, or that of genius, which we think of as elevated. A conception that is “vulgar and trivial” is thought of as mean and can just as well be described as being low. More examples are given. We think of a rise to prosperity and descent to poverty. The place of a king is an elevated one, while that of a peasant or laborer the lowest one. These methods of thinking, and of expressing ourselves, are not of so little consequence as they may appear at first sight.

8. In both the philosophy of nature and in common sense, it is recognized that there is no intrinsic distinction between the higher and the lower. An object descending from a height to a depth in one hemisphere moves in a direction that would be from depth to height in the opposite hemisphere. The only thing that distinguishes the two is gravitation. If the former object is moving toward the attracting body, the latter is moving away from it, which accounts for the difference in the way the two motions are described. The tendency of bodies to move toward the ground is reflected in the imagination. When we think of an object at a higher location, we tend to think of its moving gradually downward to the ground, “which equally stops the body and our imagination.” On the other hand, the imagination finds it harder to think of a body moving upward, “as if our ideas acquir’d a kind of gravity from their objects.” A further proof of this tendency of the imagination is found in poetry and music, with its much-studied notions of falling (of intonation in poetry) and cadence (falling of pitch in music). The names are appropriate because they convey a facility of movement, and the idea of facility suggests descent, just as descent is more the more easily brought about.

9. Two points have now been established. When the imagination moves from the lower to the higher, it encounters opposition. And the soul, when it is “elevated with joy and courage” seeks opposition, in a way, and throws itself into activities that would stimulate its courage. Therefore, ”every thing, which invigorates and enlivens the soul, whether by touching the passions or imagination, naturally conveys to the fancy this inclination for ascent, and determines it to run against its natural stream of its thoughts and conceptions.” The elevated disposition of the mind makes it seek an opposition that enlivens it, rather than enfeebling it. This is the explanation why “[v]irtue, genius, power and riches” are associated with height and “poverty, slavery, and folly” are thought to be low. The author gives an argument for the claim that “the very nature of ascent and descent is deriv‘d from the difficulty and propensity” of action. Milton has described the angels as easily moving upward but as moving downward only with difficulty. If humans were this way, they would have more regard for the low than for the high. So all the effects of height and depth on humans results not from their intrinsic properties but from the difficulty of ascent and ease of descent.

10. Having finished the digression announced in paragraph 3 above, the author applies his results to the question at hand, which is why distance in time has a greater effect on the passions than distance in space. Because space invariably appears to the imagination as unified and time as “always broken and divided,” the transition in the imagination from one part of time to another is more difficult than the transition from one space to another. When the separation of an object from the present is small, the imagination is interrupted and weakened. But when it is great, the mind is elevated by the greatness of the distance and enlivened by the difficulty in transversing it, which is a greater difficulty than in transversing a great stretch of time. Because the mind has an elevated disposition, the distance has a greater effect upon the imagination, which causes the temporally distant object to be held in greater esteem, “and this is the reason why all the relicts of antiquity are so precious in our eyes, and appear more valuable than what is brought even from the remotest parts of the world.”

11. The explanation of third phenomenon to be explained, that a distance in past time increases the passions more than an equal distance in future time, fully confirms the explanation just given. For example, we have more admiration for our ancestors to any imagined descendants. The first point to note is that the imagination moves more easily into the future than into the past, so that removal to the past weakens the ideas more than removal to the future. This decrease in liveliness would seem at first sight to correspond to a weaker passion, contrary to the phenomenon just noted. And this is the case when the distance is small. But when the removal to the past is very great, our passions are stronger than with an equal removal to the future.

12. We commonly think of ourselves as situated at a mid-point between past and future. Since the imagination has more difficulty in moving toward the past, its motion in this direction resembles an ascent, while the motion toward the future seems to us like an ascent. For this reason, our ancestors seem to be above us and our posterity below us. The effort to ascend, so to speak, to the past weakens our conception of the past object when the distance is small but increases it when it is great, so long as the object is suitable. The descent, on the other hand, allows for a stronger idea over short distances, but its strength decreases with greater distance, as there is nothing like opposition to bolster it when the distance becomes great.

13. The last paragraph completes the author‘s account of the influence of space and time on the passions. There follows in the present paragraph a summary of the account of the will given in this Section. When any good or evil [i.e., potentially pleasant or painful object], or any natural object of appetite, is present to the mind, there results either a violent or a calm passion. The former is what is commonly thought of as a “passion,” while the latter is what is called “reason” [see Section 3 for this distinction]. Because of the resemblance between violent passions and reason, it is easy to regard reasons mistakenly as conclusions drawn by the intellect. The causes and effects of both kinds of passions are quite variable, according primarily to the disposition of the minds that harbor them. The violent passions tend to have a stronger effect on the will, though this tendency can be overcome with enough of the right kind of reflection and resolution. But discovering the exact influences is not easy, given the fact that calm passions can become violent as the result of a change in a person‘s disposition, a change in the object of the passions, gathering force from a related passion [Section 4], custom [Section 5], or exciting the imagination [Sections 7 and 8]. This struggle between the violent and calm passions (or “of passion and of reason, as it is call’d”) accounts to a great extent for the differences in people and in one person over time. “Philosophy can only account for a few of the greater and more sensible events of this war; but must leave all the smaller and more delicate revolutions, as dependent on principles too fine and minute for comprehension.”