Limitations Of This System

The association of ideas and impressions makes:

• all agreeable objects related to ourselves produce pride
• all disagreeable objects produce humility

These create limitations for pride [ego] and humility [shame].

Limitation 1. The object needs a relation to the self

An agreeable object that is related to us will produce joy.

But the relation between us and the object that leads to joy is different from the relation between us and the object that causes pride.

We may feel joy on being present at a delicious feast.

• But only the master of the feast feels vanity on top of the joy.

Men sometimes boast of a great entertainment that they saw.

• They convert their joy into pride through a small relation.

Why this difference between the relation of joy and pride?

To feel joy or pride about a thing, we need to have a relation to that thing.

But the relation that produces pride has more force than joy.

Some agreeable object might belong more to other people than to us.

• This closer relation to them reduces its relation to us (Part 2, Sec. 4).

This is why a closer relation is required to produce pride than the relation that produces joy.

Limitation 2: That relation to ourselves or to a few people should be close

When often presented, everything which we have been long accustomed to:

• loses its value in our eyes
• is despised and neglected

We judge of objects more from comparison than from their real and intrinsic merit.

Whenever there is no contrast to enhance their value, we tend to overlook even what is essentially good in them.

These qualities of the mind have an effect on joy and pride [ego].

It is remarkable that:

• goods common and familiar to all mankind give us little satisfaction
• we give a much higher value to singular goods of a more excellent kind

This circumstance operates on both joy and pride.

• It has a much greater influence on vanity*.

We feel happy when health returns after a long sickness.

• It is not vain to be happy with health because many people want good health.

    <!-- ◦ It is seldom regarded as a subject of vanity, because it is shared with so many. -->
  

Pride [ego] is so much more delicate than joy because to excite pride, we must always contemplate 2 objects:

1. The thing which produces pleasure
2. The self which is the real object of pride

But joy needs only 1 object: that which gives pleasure.

This pleasure bears some relation to self.

• Yet the self is only needed to render it agreeable.

The self is not the object of joy.

Pride has 2 objects which directs our view into.

It follows that where neither of them have any singularity, pride must be more weakened than a passion which has only one object.

Upon comparing ourselves with others, we find we are not in the least distinguished.

Upon comparing the object we possess, we discover still the same unlucky circumstance.

By 2 comparisons so disadvantageous the passion must be entirely destroyed.