Observations on Man (6th edition)/Part I/Chapter III/Section III
Section III
[edit]OF THE AFFECTIONS IN GENERAL.
Here we may observe,
First, That our passions or affections can be no more than aggregates of simple ideas united by association. For they are excited by objects, and by the incidents of life. But these, if we except the impressed sensations, can have no power of affecting us, but what they derive from association; just as was observed above of words and sentences.
Secondly, Since therefore the passions are states of considerable pleasure or pain, they must be aggregates of the ideas, or traces of the sensible pleasures and pains, which ideas make up by their number, and mutual influence upon one another, for the faintness and transitory nature of each singly taken. This may be called a proof à priori. The proof à posteriori will be given, when I come to analyse the six classes of intellectual affections, viz. imagination, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, theopathy, and the moral sense.
Thirdly, As sensation is the common foundation of all these, so each in its turn, when sufficiently generated, contributes to generate and model all the rest. We may conceive this to be done in the following manner. Let sensation generate imagination; then will sensation and imagination together generate ambition; sensation, imagination, and ambition, self- interest; sensation, imagination, ambition, and self-interest, sympathy; sensation, imagination, ambition, self-interest, and sympathy, theopathy; sensation, imagination, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, and theopathy, the moral sense: and, in an inverted order, imagination will new model sensation; ambition, sensation and imagination; self-interest, sensation, imagination, and ambition; sympathy, sensation, imagination, ambition, and self-interest; theopathy, sensation, imagination, ambition, self-interest, and sympathy; and the moral sense, sensation, imagination, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, and theopathy: till at last, by the numerous reciprocal influences of all these upon each other, the passions arrive at that degree of complexness, which is observed in fact, and which makes them so difficult to be analysed.
Fourthly, As all the passions arise thus from pleasure and pain, their first and most general distribution may be into the two classes of love and hatred, i.e. we may term all those affections of the pleasurable kind, which objects and incidents raise in us, love; all those of the painful kind, hatred. Thus we are said to love not only intelligent agents of morally good dispositions, but also sensual pleasures, riches, and honours; and to hate poverty, disgrace, and pain, bodily and mental.
Fifthly, When our love and hatred are excited to a certain degree, they put us upon a variety of actions, and may be termed desire and aversion; by which last word I understand an active hatred. Now the actions which flow from desire and aversion, are entirely the result of associated powers and circumstances, agreeable to the twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second propositions, with their corollaries. The young child learns to grasp and go up to the play-thing that pleases him, and to withdraw his hand from the fire that burns him, at first from the mechanism of his nature, and without any deliberate purpose of obtaining pleasure, and avoiding pain, or any explicit reasoning about them. By degrees he learns, partly from the recurrency of these mechanical tendencies, inspired by God, as one may say, by means of the nature which He has given us, and partly from the instruction and imitation of others, to pursue every thing which he loves and desires, fly from every thing which he hates; and to reason about the method of doing this, just as he does upon other matters. And, because mankind are for the most part pursuing or avoiding something or other, the desire of happiness, and the aversion to misery, are supposed to be inseparable from, and essential to, all intelligent natures. But this does not seem to be an exact or correct way of speaking. The most general of our desires and aversions are factitious, i.e. generated by association; and therefore admit of intervals, augmentations, and diminutions. And, whoever will be sufficiently attentive to the workings of his own mind, and the actions resulting therefrom, or to the actions of others, and the affections which may be supposed to occasion them, will find such differences and singularities in different persons, and in the same person at different times, as no way agree to the notion of an essential, original, perpetual desire of happiness, and endeavour to attain it; but much rather to the factitious associated desires and endeavours here asserted. And a due regard to this, will, as it seems to me, solve many difficulties and perplexities found in treatises upon the passions. The writers upon this subject have begun in the synthetical method prematurely, and without having premised the analytical one. For it is very true that, after general desires and endeavours are generated, they give rise in their turn to a variety of particular ones. But the original source is in the particular ones, and the general ones never alter and new-model the particular ones so much, as that there are not many traces and vestiges of their original mechanical nature and proportions remaining.
Sixthly, The will appears to be nothing but a desire or aversion sufficiently strong to produce an action that is not automatic primarily or secondarily. At least it appears to me, that the substitution of these words for the word will may be justified by the common usage of language. The will is therefore that desire or aversion, which is strongest for the then present time. For if any other desire was stronger, the muscular motion connected with it by association would take place, and not that which proceeds from the will, or the voluntary one, which is contrary to the supposition. Since therefore all love and hatred, all desire and aversion, are factitious, and generated by association, i.e. mechanically, it follows that the will is mechanical also.
Seventhly, Since the things which we pursue do, when obtained, generally afford pleasure, and those which we fly from affect us with pain, if they overtake us, it follows that the gratification of the will is generally attended or associated with pleasure, the disappointment of it with pain. Hence a mere associated pleasure is transferred upon the gratification of the will; a mere associated pain upon the disappointment of it. And if the will was always gratified, this mere associated pleasure would, according to the present frame of our natures, absorb, as it were, all our other pleasures; and thus by drying up the source from whence it sprung, be itself dried up at last: and the first disappointments, after a long course of gratification, would be intolerable. Both which things are sufficiently observable, in an inferior degree, in children that are much indulged, and in adults, after a series of successful events. Gratifications of the will without the consequent expected pleasure, and disappointments of it without the consequent expected pain, are particularly useful to us here. And it is by this amongst other means, that the human will is brought to a conformity with the divine; which is the only radical cure for all our evils and disappointments, and the only earnest and medium for obtaining lasting happiness.
Eighthly, We often desire and pursue things which give pain rather than pleasure. Here it is to be supposed, that at first they afforded pleasure, and that they now give pain on account of a change in our nature and circumstances. Now, as the continuance to desire and pursue such objects, notwithstanding the pain arising from them, is the effect of the power of association, so the same power will at last reverse its own steps, and free us from such hurtful desires and pursuits. The recurrency of pain will at last render the object undesirable and hateful. And the experience of this painful process, in a few particular instances, will at last, as in other cases of the same kind, beget a habit of ceasing to pursue things, which we perceive by a few trials, or by rational arguments, to be hurtful to us upon the whole.
Ninthly, A state of desire ought to be pleasant at first, from the near relation of desire to love, and of love to pleasure and happiness. But in the course of a long pursuit, so many fears and disappointments, apparent or real, in respect of the subordinate means, and so many strong agitations of mind passing the limits of pleasure, intervene, as greatly to chequer a state of desire with misery. For the same reasons states of aversion are chequered with hope and comfort.
Tenthly, Hope and fear are, as just now observed, the attendants upon desire and aversion. These affect us more or less, according to the more or less frequent recurrency of the pleasing and painful ideas, according to the greater or less probability of the expected event, according to the greater or less distance of time, &c. the power of association displaying itself every where in the agitations of mind excited by these passions. It is particularly remarkable here that our hopes and fears rise and fall with certain bodily dispositions, according as these favour or oppose them.
Eleventhly, Joy and grief take place when the desire and aversion, hope and fear, are at an end; and are love and hatred, exerted towards an object which is present either in a sensible manner, or in a rational one, i.e. so as to occupy the whole powers of the mind, as sensible objects, when present, and attended to, do the external senses. It is very evident, that the objects of the intellectual pleasures and pains derive their power of thus affecting the mind from association.
Twelfthly, After the actual joy and grief are over, and the object withdrawn, there generally remains a pleasing or displeasing recollection or resentment, which recurs with every recurrency of the idea of the object, or of the associated ones. This recollection keeps up the love or hatred. In like manner the five grateful passions, love, desire, hope, joy, and pleasing recollection, all enhance one another; as do the five ungrateful ones, hatred, aversion, fear, grief, and displeasing recollection. And the whole ten, taken together, comprehend, as appears to me, all the general passions of human nature.