G. J. Mattey’s Notes on Hume’s Treatise, Book 2, Part 3, Section 9

Notes on Hume’s Treatise

by G. J. Mattey

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

Sect. 9. Of the direct passions.

Although the direct passions receive equal billing with the will in the title of Part III of Book II, the first three Sections are devoted to the will and the fourth through eight Sections to the causes of the passions, leaving only Sections 9 and 10 for an account of the direct passions as such. In those sections, only the passions of hope and fear (in the present Section) and curiosity (in the next Section) are treated in any detail.

Hutcheson’s Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections understands good and evil to be predicated of “Objects, Actions, or Events” that “are the Causes, or Occasions, mediately or immediately, of a grateful, or ungrateful Perception to some sensitive nature” (Section I). These grateful or ungrateful perceptions or sensations are to be distinguished from other modifications of the mind related to them that are called “affections.” The affections of the mind arise from reflection on the sensations that are or will be produced by objects, actions or events (Section II). Desire is raised by “the Apprehension of Good, either to ourselves or others, as attainable” (Section III). Aversion is the desire to remove or prevent evil or the loss of good. The sensation of joy is the result of “Reflection upon the Presence or certain Futurity of any Good . . . [and] . . . upon the Removal or Prevention of Evil which once threatened ourselves or others“ (Section III). That of sorrow results from reflecting on the presence or certain prospect of evil, or of the loss of good. Following Malebranche, Hutcheson termed these “spiritual or pure Affections” (Section III). Fear as an affection is “a Mixture of Sorrow and Aversion, when we apprehend the Probability of Evil, or the Loss of Good befalling ourselves, or those we love” (Section III). Hope, on the other hand, is “a Mixture of Desire and Joy, upon the probability of obtaining Good, and avoiding Evil” (Section III).

1. The author claims that it is “easy to observe, that the passions, both direct and indirect, are founded on pain and pleasure.” A further easy observation is that the only thing required “to produce an affection of any kind” is the presentation of some good or evil. [In Book I, Part III, Section 10, paragraph 2, the author had identified good and evil with pleasure and pain, respectively.] If the pain or pleasure is removed, then “most of our reflective or secondary impressions” are removed, including pride and humility, love and hatred, and desire and aversion. [The former are indirect passions, the latter direct.]

3. An immediate impression of pain or pleasure which arises from an object that is related either to ourselves or to another person produces a direct passion of desire or aversion with respect to that object. However, this production does not prevent the production of a new passion of pride or humility, or love or hatred, regarding ourselves or the other. In fact, these impressions are excited “by concurring with certain dormant principles of the human mind.” The resulting indirect passions of pride, humility, love, and hatred are the product of a double relation of ideas and impressions, as described in Part I and Part II of the present Book. The direct passions of desire or aversion with respect to the object do not thereby cease to exist, but continue along with indirect passions they trigger.

4. The direct and indirect passions do not merely co-exist. There is a feedback effect whereby the production of the indirect passions enliven the original direct passions. An example is the pleasure one gets from the beauty of a fine suit of clothing. If this clothing is one’s own, a sentiment of pride ensues, and this increases the pleasure in regarding the clothing. The increase in pleasure “gives a new force to our desire or volition, joy or hope.”

5. Joy is the result of the presence or thought of a certain or probable good, while grief or sorrow results from that of a certain or probable evil.

6. Uncertain goods and evils give rise to fear and hope. The degree of fear and hope varies proportionally to the degree of uncertainty: we are less fearful when we are less certain of the evil, etc.

7. When good and evil are considered in themselves, they give rise to desire and aversion, respectively. The volition arises, or (which is the same), the will exerts itself, when an action of the mind or body is seen as bringing about a good or avoiding an evil. [In Section 1, paragraph 2, the author had defined will as “the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind.” He notes there that the will, in the proper sense, is not “comprehended under the passions.”]

8. The author reiterates the identification of the good with pleasure and the evil with pain. He notes that there is another source of the direct passions besides these: “a natural impulse or instinct, which is perfectly unaccountable.” A partial list is given:

9. Only the passions of hope and fear merit further discussion. Specifically, what is to be explained is why uncertainty gives rise to these passions rather than the passions of joy and grief, which arise when we are certain of a good or an evil. The explanation will appeal to some aspects of the author’s account of probability, which was given in Book I, Part III, Sections 12 and 13.

10. The mind is uncertain, or its judgments only probable, when it entertains conflicting possibilities or causes. [For example, before a die is rolled, the mind recognizes that any one of the six sides might turn up.] This makes the mind vacillate between considering as existent one of them or one of the others. (What specifically is not fixed is either the understanding or the imagination, “call it which you please.”) Even if one of the contrary possibilities or causes has more weight than the other, the mind cannot settle on it. “The pro and con of the question alternately prevail; and the mind, surveying the object in its opposite principles, finds such a contrariety as utterly destroys all certainty and establish’d opinion.”

11. When the mind fixes temporarily on a good, joy is produced, and when it fixes temporarily on an evil, there is sorrow. Thus there is a parallel division of the mind between the ideas of goods and evils and the impressions of joy and hatred.

12. To explain the division of opposite emotions, the author invokes an analogy with two kinds of musical instruments. A wind instrument produces notes that end when the passage of air ceases, but a stringed instrument continues to vibrate, with diminishing force, after being stroked. The passions are like the vibrations of the strings, and what we imagine is like the stroking of the strings. Thus, while the imagination can move quickly and discretely from one to another view of the object, the passions which accompany those views change more slugglishly. The joy that is the residual effect of a view of the good, for example, does not vanish instantaneously when a contrary view of the evil comes before the imagination and brings with it the passion of sorrow. Rather, “the one passion will always be mixt and confounded with the other.” In the case of probability, our degree of credence is based on the proportion of views of one side versus those of the other. The parallel feature of the passions is that the proportion of joy and sorrow will vary with the probability of the good or the evil. This can be viewed on one of two ways. Either there are two passioned mixed together in a certain proportion, or “which is the same thing,” there is a single passion whose degree is tempered by the prior appearance of the opposite passion. In one case, there is the passion of hope, and in the other, the passion of fear. “That is, in other words, the grief and joy being intermingled with each other, by means of the contrary views of the imagination, produce by their union the passions of hope and fear.”

13. Having described the various contrary passions, desire and aversion, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, the author raises the question of what happens in specific kinds of cases where both are present. Suppose that the objects of two contrary passions, say joy and sorrow, are presented at the same time. Sometimes this leads to the predominance of one passion over the other, which generally occurs upon our first encounter with the objects. But we observe other reactions as well. Sometimes they:

14. The first case is explained by there being two unrelated objects of the passions, which we consider alternately. Someone who feels grief over losing a law-suit and the joy of the birth of a son does not mix these emotions, no matter how quickly the imagination turns from the one event to the other.

15. The second case, the “calm situation“ in which both passions are destroyed, is most easily attained by there being a single object which is both good and evil, or “something adverse and something prosperous in its different circumstances.” [One might consider a beautiful, but potentially harmful, object. Its beauty would incite desire and its potential harm aversion, the conflict between the two leaving my mind “in perfect tranquility.”]

16. The final case is the one described above in paragraph 12. It is not the case that both good and evil reside in the same object at the same time, but rather that there is uncertainty as to whether the object will result in pleasure or in pain. [For example, one might have to undergo a medical procedure that might alleviate a malady or might result in serious bodily harm.] The author asserts that the contrary passions [joy at cure and grief at harm, in the example] will both be present, subsisting together and producing ”a third impression or affection by their union.” Two passions can destroy each other in these cases only if when they “exactly” causally interact with (“rencounter”) each other, are moving in the opposite direction of each other, and are associated with opposing sensations [of pleasure or pain] that give rise to them. [The joy at t₁ when viewing the pleasurable prospects of cure clashes the grief at t₂ when turning the view to the painful prospects of harm.] How “exact” the interaction is depends on the relations of the ideas of the different prospects. When the ideas are related by probability, they determine the view of whether the object will exist or not exist. The mind cannot entertain both views at the same time, but must “run alternately from the one to the other.” Each view carries with it its own passion, which persists in the manner of the vibrations of a stroked string, as described above in paragraph 12. “The incompatibility of the views keeps the passions from shocking in a direct line, if that expression may be allow’d; and yet their relation is sufficient to mingle their fainter emotions.” This is how the passions of hope and fear arise through a kind of mingling of joy and sorrow.

17. The author now summarizes his account of the three possible effects of contrary emotions. When they arise from different objects, they succeed each other. When they arise from different parts of the same object, they destroy each other. And when they arise from contrary chances upon which the object depends, they are mixed together. Thus, the different results depend on the relations of the ideas of the object in the mind. The author illustrates this point by an analogy. The first case is like that of two “opposite liquors” which are in separate bottles and hence cannot interact. The second is like the neutralization which results when an alkali is mixed with an acid. And the third is like the imperfect mixture of oil and vinegar.

18. The “proofs” of the author’s hypothesis described above will be concise because the hypothesis “carries its own evidence along with it.” The author adds that a few strong arguments are preferable to many weak ones.

19. In the case where the chances of good or evil from the same object are viewed as equal, the passions of fear and hope may arise. [In the example, it may be thought that there is a 50/50 chance of the procedure curing the ailment or bringing significant harm.] In fact, “in this situation the passions are rather the strongest, as the mind has then the least foundation to rest upon, and is toss’d with the greatest uncertainty.” If the probability of evil is increased, the passion shades over into fear. And with each increment of the probability of evil, the degree of fear increases, “till at last it runs insensibly, as the joy continually diminishes, into pure grief.” Now reverse the procedure, by decreasing the probability of evil, in which case the fear diminishes and is insensibly replaced with hope, which can become pure joy at the limit. The author regards this thought-experiment as being as clear a proof as the experiment in optics in which a ray of sunlight is separated into two colors by a prism. A greater shading toward one color is brought about by an increase or diminution of the quantities of the two colors. “I am sure neither natural nor moral philosophy admits of stronger proofs.”

20. The author notes that there are two kinds of probability: one in which it is not determined what will take place, and the other in which it is determined but not apparent to a person. More precisely, the first kind of probability is one where “the object is really in itself uncertain and to be determin’d by chance.” [Note that according to the author in Book I, Part III, Section 11, chance is the negation of cause and hence does not exist in nature. However, what we call “chance” is what leaves the mind indifferent as to whether it will occur.” So apparently the quoted sentence refers to an object whose future state is determined by something that appears to the mind as likely as something other than it.] The second kind of probability is “when, tho’ the object be already certain, yet ’tis uncertain to our judgment, which finds a number of proofs on each side of the question.” [Here, it appears that ‘certain’ means that the state of the object has been already determined.] In both cases, the passions are influenced only by the view of things, which is the same in both cases: “the uncertainty and fluctuation they bestow on the imagination by that contrariety of views, which is common to both.” [In the example, fear and hope would be induced both before the procedure and after it, but before the results have become apparent.]

21. It has been shown that probability can bring about hope and fear due to the parallel between the uncertainty in the mind and the fluctuation of the passions. The case for the author’s hypothesis is raised to the level of a “convincing proof” by the consideration that hope and fear can arise even without the good or evil’s being to some significant extent probable.

22. The mere thought of the possibility of an evil sometimes induces fear, “especially if the evil be very great.” If someone thinks he is in the least danger of torture, for example, he will tremble in fear. The reason is that the severity of the pain compensates for the slightness of the probability that it will be suffered, and the resulting sensation is as if [a lesser] pain were substantially probable. “One glimpse or view of the former, has the same effect as several of the latter.”

23. The thought of an impossibility may bring about the passion of fear. The author’s example is the fear of falling off a cliff when one is not close to the edge and has it in his power not to advance toward it. The immediate presence of the evil has the same influence on the imagination as would the certainty that the evil would take place. But this influence can be “retracted” immediately by reflection on one’s security. This wavering brings about the same kind of passion, fear, as is produced in the case of uncertainty due to contrary chances.

24. There remains the case of the certainty of the occurrence of the evil. [It may seem that according to the author’s hypothesis, sorrow or grief should arise.] Something very like fear may be produced in this case as well. Consider a prisoner who is sentenced to be tortured on the rack and is certain that this event will occur, as he cannot escape his imprisonment. Here, there is some mental conflict because the evil is so terrible that “the mind continually rejects it with horror.” But at the same time, “it continually presses in upon the thought” Once again there is a fluctuation in the mind, and this results in “a passion of much the same appearance with fear.”

25. Now the author adds a second dimension to his explanation. It is not only the uncertainty of the existence of a good or evil that produces hope or fear, but the kind of good or evil has an influence as well. The author puts forward the case of a man who has been informed by a trustworthy source that one of his sons has been killed. It may seem that the resulting passion would be pure grief, but there remains the fact that he is uncertain about which one has been killed, and so he lacks certainty about the kind of evil that has occurred. There is no admixture of joy here, but there is fluctuation in the mind, as it moves from one possibility to the other. This fluctuation produces the same kind of passion as one which results from “the mixture and contention of grief and joy.”

26. The next phase of the argument is to show how the hypothesis can explain the relation between fear and surprise. The phenomenon in question is “that surprize is apt to change into fear, and every thing that is unexpected affrights us.” The most obvious explanation is simply that humans are naturally timid, so that we immediately conclude upon the presence of any new object that it is evil. However, the author claims that an explanation based on his hypothesis is superior. When something suddenly and unexpectedly enters the mind, it causes a commotion, just as does everything that we are not accustomed to or prepared for. We become curious as to what the thing is, and violently so because of its force in entering our minds. In this curiosity, the mind is uneasy in a way that resembles the uneasiness in the passage from joy to grief and back. “This image of fear naturally converts into the thing [fear] itself, and gives us a real apprehension of evil, as the mind always forms its judgments more from its present disposition than from the nature of its objects.”

27. The author concludes that all forms of uncertainty have a close connection with fear, even if they are not based on opposing passions (joy and grief) that are produced by different views of things. A further example is that of our sentiments concerning a friend who has a life-or-death illness. The author contends that we feel more fearful when away from the friend than when at his side. This is in spite of the fact that his presence would have been of no assistance and would not have given him any further information about the friend’s condition. So the uncertainty when one is present or absence is the same. The difference lies in the fact that presence keeps the mind fixed on the specific details of the friend’s condition. But absence allows the mind to wander in the way it does in cases of fear. It is true that uncertainty gives rise to hope as well as fear, so that it is allied equally closely with both. But uncertainty is still more inclined toward fear because it is itself an uneasy condition, and the uneasy impression brought on by fear resembles the uneasiness of the passion of fear.

28. This accounts for the fact that if we are uneasy about even the smallest circumstance of the friend, we become more apprehensive about his death. This is reflected in a verse by Horace, which notes that a bird has more fear of a snake’s eating her chicks when she is away from the nest than when she is in it, despite the fact that she could not stop the event.

29. The last piece of evidence is that fear can arise from uncertainty even when we are anticipating a good thing. His example is that of a virgin on her wedding night, who fears the events that will take place even though she has desired them and believes they will be very pleasurable. “The newness and greatness of the event, the confusion of wishes and joys, so embarrass the mind, that it knows not on what passion to fix itself; from whence arises a fluttering or unsettledness of the spirits, which being, in some degree, uneasy, very naturally degenerates into fear.”

30. The conclusion is that every kind of uncertainty produces either fear or a passion so much like fear “that they are scarcely to be distinguish’d.”

31. Having completed his argument for the link between uncertainty and fear, the author notes that there are a number of species of hope and fear, and that he has confined his examination to “their most simple and natural situation.” There are many variants of fear that depend upon “the mixture of different views and reflections.” The following is a partial list of the species of fear:

32. The desire not to run on at great length has also led the author not to consider the will and direct passions of non-human animals [as he had with the operations of the understanding]. His reason is that the similarity between them and humans is obvious. “I leave this to the reader’s own observation; desiring him at the same time to cinsider the additional force this bestows on the present system.”

The subject of the direct passions forms Section I of the Dissertation. Nearly all of the content of the present Section of the Treatise is reproduced there, most of it verbatim. The material from paragraphs 12, 13, most of 16, and 17 is omitted, and that from paragraphs 14, 15, and the early part of 16, is moved to the end of Section I.