SEC. 3: DIFFICULTIES SOLVED

It is superfluous to examine all the causes of love and hatred after so many undeniable proofs drawn from daily experience.

• Therefore, I shall use this part:
    1. To remove some difficulties on particular causes of these passions.
    2. To examine the compound affections arising from the mixture of love and hatred with other emotions.
• It is most obvious that:
    ◦ anyone acquires our kindness, or is exposed to our ill-will, in proportion to the pleasure or uneasiness we receive from him
    ◦ the passions keep pace exactly with the sensations in all their changes and variations.
• Whoever can render himself useful or agreeable to us by his services, beauty, or flattery, is sure of our affections.
    ◦ Whoever harms or displeases us always excites our anger or hatred.
• When our own nation is at war with any other, we detest them as cruel, perfidious, unjust and violent.
    ◦ But we always esteem ourselves and our allies as equitable, moderate, and merciful.
• If the general of our enemies is successful, we allow him the figure and character of a man, with difficulty.
    ◦ Oliver Cromwell and the Duke of Luxembourg were reported to:
        ▪ be sorcerers
        ▪ have communication with demons
        ▪ be bloody-minded
        ▪ take pleasure in death and destruction.
• But if success is on our side, our commander:
    ◦ has all the opposite good qualities
    ◦ is an example of virtue, courage, and conduct.
• His treachery, we call policy.
    ◦ His cruelty is an evil inseparable from war.
• In short, we try to extenuate or dignify all of his faults as virtue.
    ◦ The same method of thinking runs through common life.
• Some people:
    ◦ add another condition.
    ◦ require that the pain and pleasure:
        ▪ arise from the person
        ▪ arise knowingly with a particular design and intention.
• A man, who wounds and harms us by accident, does not become our enemy.
    ◦ We do not think ourselves bound by any ties of gratitude to one who does us any service accidentally.
• Actions become causes of love or hatred by the good or bad intention.
• But here we must make a distinction.
• If that quality which pleases or displeases in another is constant and inherent in his character, it will cause love or hatred, independent of the intention.
    ◦ But otherwise, a knowledge and design is needed to create these passions.
• A person who is disagreeable by his deformity or folly is the object of our aversion.
    ◦ Even if he did not intend to displease us by these qualities.
• But if the uneasiness does not proceed from a quality, but from an action produced and annihilated in a moment, it needs to be derived from a particular fore-thought and design, to:
    ◦ produce some relation
    ◦ connect this action with that person.
• It is not enough:
    ◦ for the action to arise from the person
    ◦ to have him for its immediate cause and author.
• This relation alone is too feeble and inconstant to be a foundation for these passions.
    ◦ It does not:
        ▪ reach the sensible and thinking part.
        ▪ proceed from anything durable in him
        ▪ leave anything behind it.
• It passes in a moment as if it had never been.
    ◦ On the other hand, an intention shows qualities which remain after the action is performed.
        ▪ These qualities:
            • connect it with the person
            • facilitate the transition of ideas from one to the other.
• We can never think of him without reflecting on these qualities, unless repentance and a change of life have produced a change in that respect.
    ◦ In this case, the passion is likewise changed.
• This is why an intention is needed to excite love or hatred.
• An intention strengthens the relation of ideas.
    ◦ Intention is often necessary to:
        ▪ produce a relation of impressions
        ▪ give rise to pleasure and uneasiness.
• The principal part of an injury is the contempt and hatred on the person’s intention who injures us.
    ◦ Without that, the mere harm gives us a less sensible uneasiness.
• Similarly, a good office is agreeable, chiefly because it flatters our vanity.
    ◦ It is a proof of the kindness and esteem of its performer.
• The removal of the intention removes the mortification in the former case, and vanity in the latter.
    ◦ It must cause a remarkable reduction in love and hatred.
• These effects of the removal of intention in reducing the relations of impressions and ideas, are not entire
    ◦ They are unable to remove every degree of these relations.
• But if the removal of intention is able to remove love and hatred entirely?
    ◦ Experience tells us of the contrary.
    ◦ Men often become violently angry for involuntary and accidental injuries.
    ◦ This anger cannot last long.
    ◦ But it is sufficient to show that:
        ▪ there is a natural connection between uneasiness and anger
        ▪ the relation of impressions will operate on a very small relation of ideas.
• But after the violence of the impression a little abated, the relation’s defect begins to be better felt.
    ◦ A person is not interested in such casual and involuntary injuries.
    ◦ We seldom entertain a lasting enmity on them.
• This is illustrated by:
    ◦ the uneasiness proceeding from another person by accident
    ◦ the uneasiness from an acknowledged necessity and duty.
        ▪ These have little force to excite our passion.
• A person that has a real intention of harming us from justice and equity, instead of hatred and ill-will, does not draw our anger on him, if we are reasonable.
    ◦ He is both the cause and the knowing cause of our sufferings.
    ◦ Let us examine this phenomenon.
• In the first place, this circumstance is not decisive.
    ◦ It may be able to reduce the passions.
    ◦ It can seldom entirely remove them.
• Few criminals have no ill-will to their accuser or to the judge that condemns them, even if they are conscious of their own deserts?
• Our antagonist in a law-suit and our competitor for any office, are commonly regarded as our enemies, even if their motive is as justifiable as our own.
• When we receive harm from anyone, we are apt to imagine him criminal.
    ◦ We allow of his justice and innocence with extreme difficulty.
• This is a clear proof that, independent of the opinion of iniquity:
    ◦ any harm or uneasiness has a natural tendency to excite our hatred
    ◦ we afterwards seek for reasons to justify and establish our hatred .
• Here, the idea of injury does not produce the passion, but arises from it.
• It is no wonder why hatred should produce the opinion of injury.
    ◦ Since otherwise, hatred must suffer a considerable reduction, which all the passions avoid as much as possible.
• The removal of injury may remove the anger without proving that the anger arises only from the injury.
• The harm and the justice are two contrary objects.
    ◦ Harm produces hatred.
    ◦ Justice produces love.
• Either of the objects prevails and excites its proper passion according to:
    ◦ their different degrees
    ◦ our particular turn of thinking.