sage, "'tis also evident, that the ideas of the affections of others are converted into the very impressions they represent, and that the passions arise in conformity to the images we form of them."[1] This change which thus takes place does not transform the idea of a desire to get rid of John Smith's pain into an actual desire to get rid of our pain; it is still John Smith's pain that is in question. And as the thought of our pain is not contained in our idea of John Smith's pain, so the thought of our pain is as alien to the nature of this sympathetic idea after it is enlivened as it was before. The process of enlivening has not made our idea of a desire to get rid of his pain an egoistic desire; and yet that process is all that takes place in the production of our pity for him.
But it will be said in reply that we have slurred over the nature of that process, and that if we were only to look more carefully at the way in which our idea of another man's desire gets access of liveliness, we should see that the resultant lively desire must be egoistic. Let us see.
Where does this liveliness come from? From "so lively a conception of our own person, that 'tis not possible to imagine, that anything can in this particular go beyond it."[2] Does not this intervention of the idea of self make the sympathetic desire egoistic? By no means, unless the idea of self is taken over into the passion so as to make the passion a desire for relief from my own pain. This, however, does not occur. The only thing that the idea of self does is to make over some of its liveliness to the idea of another's passion? What is "conveyed" to the idea of the passion is not any part of the content of the idea of self, but merely the vivacity with which that content is endowed.
This conveyance is made possible by the relation which obtains between ourselves, of whom the idea is so lively, and John Smith,
- ↑ II, I, II; S-B., p. 319; G., II, p 113. Italics are mine.
- ↑ II, I, II; S-B., p. 317 ; G., II, p. 112.
another's affection. This according to Hume's general principles is nothing but a faint reproduction, in our consciousness, of another's affection as it exists in his. But as it exists in his consciousness, it is an affection with the avoidance of his pain as object; hence when it is reproduced in us it is a fainter affection, but still with the avoidance of his pain as object. When this fainter affection becomes stronger, it does not change its object.
