The Object And Causes Of Love And Hatred

Love and hatred produce a simple impression, without any mixture.

• This makes them impossible to define.

It would be as unnecessary to describe them from their nature, origin, causes and objects because they are sufficiently known from our common feeling and experience.

Like pride and humility, love and hatred has a great resemblance.

I shall explain pride and humility to explain love and hatred.

Pride and humility

The immediate object of pride and humility is self.

• We are aware of our own thoughts, actions, and feelings.

The object of love and hatred is some other person.

• We are not aware of the thoughts, actions, and feelings of that person.

    ◦ Our love and hatred are always directed to some sensible being external to us.
    ◦ When we talk of self-love, it is not in a proper sense,
    ◦ the sensation it produces does anything in common with that tender emotion excited by a friend or mistress.
  

  • It is the same case with hatred. ◦ We may be mortified by our own faults and follies. ◦ but never feel any anger or hatred except from the injuries of others.

  • But though the object of love and hatred is always some other person. ◦ It is plain that the object is not the cause of these passions or alone sufficient to excite them. • Love and hatred: ◦ are directly contrary in their sensation ◦ have the same object in common. ▪ If that object were also their cause, it would produce these opposite passions in an equal degree. ▪ They must, from the very first moment, destroy each other. ▪ None of them would ever be able to make its appearance. Therefore, there must be some cause different from the object.

The causes of love and hatred:

• are very much diversified
• do not have many things in common.

The virtue, knowledge, wit, good sense, good humour of any person, produce love and esteem, and hatred and contempt. ◦ The same passions arise from: ▪ bodily accomplishments, such as beauty, force, swiftness, dexterity; and their contraries ▪ from the external advantages and disadvantages of family, possession, clothes, nation and climate. • From these causes, we derive a new distinction between: ◦ the quality that operates ◦ the subject on which it is placed. • A prince that has a stately palace, commands the esteem of the people: ◦ at first, by the beauty of the palace ◦ secondly, by the relation of property, which connects the beauty with him. • The removal of either of these destroys the passion. ◦ It proves that the cause is a compounded one. • It would be tedious to trace the passions of love and hatred, through all our observations on pride and humility equally applicable to both. • Generally: ◦ the object of love and hatred is some thinking person ◦ the sensation of the love is always agreeable, and of hatred is uneasy. • We can show with probability, that ◦ the cause of both passions is always related to a thinking being ◦ the cause of love produces a separate pleasure ◦ the cause of of the latter a separate uneasiness. • The supposition, that the cause of love and hatred must be related to a thinking being in order to produce them, is: ◦ probable ◦ too obvious to be contested. • The following excite no love or hatred, esteem or contempt towards those unrelated to them: ◦ virtue and vice in the abstract ◦ beauty and deformity, when placed on inanimate objects ◦ poverty and riches when belonging to a third person. • A person looking out at a window sees me in the street and a beautiful palace unrelated to me. ◦ This person will not pay me the same respect, as if I were owner of the palace. • It is not so evident at first sight, that: ◦ a relation of impressions is requisite to these passions ◦ because in the transition the one impression is so much confounded with the other, that they become indistinguishable. • But as in pride and humility, we have easily been able to: ◦ make the separation ◦ prove that every cause of these passions produces a separate pain or pleasure • I might use this method to examine the causes of love and hatred. ◦ But I delay this examination for a moment. • Instead, I shall convert all my reaaonings on pride and humility to my present purpose, by an argument founded on unquestionable examination. • Persons satisfied with their own character, genius, or fortune desire to: ◦ show themselves to the world ◦ acquire mankind’s love and approbation. • The very same qualities and circumstances which cause pride or self-esteem also cause vanity. ◦ We always view those particulars which best satisfies ourselves. • But if love and esteem were not produced by the same qualities as pride, as these qualities are related to ourselves or others, this method would be very absurd. ◦ Men could not expect a correspondence in the sentiments of every other person, with those themselves have entertained. • Few can form exact systems of the passions, or make reflections on their general nature and resemblances. • But without such a progress in philosophy, we are not subject to many mistakes in this. • We are guided by common experience and a kind of presentation which tells us what will operate on others, by what we feel immediately in ourselves. • The same qualities that produce pride or humility cause love or hatred. ◦ All the arguments to prove that the causes of pride and humility excite a pain or pleasure, will be applicable with equal evidence to the causes of love and hatred.