the Inquiry more briefly, but perhaps as convincingly—that moral approbation cannot ultimately be founded upon principles of mere reason. After thus clearing the ground, he attempts to explain our approbation of moral conduct by referring, not to a supposed 'moral sense,' but to what he assumes to be the springs of human action and the determining effects of human experience.
Now the important difference between the standpoint of the Treatise and that of the Inquiry, just referred to, consists in the radically different answers given in the two works to the question: What are the springs of action—the fundamental tendencies of human nature? In the Treatise, these are held to be (i) egoism, (2) limited altruism, and (3) 'sympathy.' The relation between them is difficult to state in a few words,—indeed, so far as 'sympathy' is concerned, difficult to state at all,—but Hume's position in the Treatise plainly is that human nature is essentially egoistic. As regards altruism, he holds distinctly that we have no particular love for our fellow-beings as such.[1] Our limited altruism manifests itself only in the case of those standing to us in the closest relations of life, and in a way which does not permit us to suppose that it is an original principle of human nature, strictly coördinate with the self-regarding tendency.
At this point Hume employs the rather mysterious principle of 'sympathy.' For him, in his earlier work, as for many of the later empiricists, 'sympathy' is produced through the 'association of ideas.' His peculiar mode of explanation is as follows,—the point being to show that in this case an 'idea' is practically converted into an 'impression.' The 'impression of ourselves' is particularly vivid, and by 'association' it happens that a corresponding (though of course not equal) vividness is imparted to that which relates to ourselves. But other human beings are similar to ourselves. This relation of 'similarity' makes us vividly conceive what concerns them, the other relations of 'contiguity' and 'causation' [i.e., kinship here] assisting in the matter. Thus our idea of another's emotion
- ↑ Treatise, bk. iii, pt. ii, § 1.
