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.