Experiments To Confirm My System

Everyone will agree to my conclusion on the transition of related impressions and ideas.

I will make some new experiments on:

• love and hatred
• pride and humility

Let us suppose, I am with a [neutral] person, not my friend nor enemy.

What

• are the nature of these passions?
• is their situation with respect to each other?

These 4 affections are in a square.

• They have a regular connection with, and distance from each other.

Pride and humility, love and hatred, are connected by the identity of their object.

The object of:

• pride and humility is self
• love and hatred is some other person

These 2 lines of connection form two opposite sides of the square.

• Pride and love are agreeable passions.
• Hatred and humility are uneasy ones.

There is a similarity of sensation between:

• pride and love
• humility and hatred

This similarity:

• forms a new connection
• are the other two sides of the square

Pride is connected with humility, love with hatred, by their objects or ideas.

Pride is connected with love, humility with hatred, by their sensations or impressions.

These passions are produced through a double relation of:

• ideas to the object of the passion
• sensation to the passion itself

This we must prove by our experiments.

Experiment 1

Let us suppose, that I and the other person see a rock.

• It causes no pain or pleasure to either of us.

The rock will not produce love, hate, humility, pride.

Experiment 2

Suppose the rock belongs to me.

• This forms a connection between it and me.
• This connection creates a passion.

Experiment 3

Suppose I were travelling with a companion through a country new to us both.

I may feel good with myself and my companion if:

• the views are beautiful
• the roads are good
• the inns are convenient

But this country has no relation to me or my friend.

• So it can never be the immediate cause of pride or love.

My emotions are merely the overflowings of an elevate or humane disposition, instead of being an established passion.

• The case is the same where the object produces uneasiness.

Experiment 4

I have shown that an object can ever cause pride or humility, love or hatred if it has:

• no relation of ideas or impressions
• only one relation.

Reason alone may convince us that whatever has a double relation must necessarily excite these passions, since they must have some cause.

Let us renew our experiments and see whether it answers our expectation. ◦ I choose an object, such as virtue, that causes a separate satisfaction. ◦ I bestow a relation to self on this virtue. ◦ I find that pride immediately arises from this disposition. ▪ This object bears a double relation to pride. ▪ Its idea is related to the idea of self. ▪ The self is the object of pride. ◦ The self causes a sensation resembling the sensation of pride.

I remove first one relation, and then another, to be sure that am not mistaken.

I find that each removal:

• destroys the passion
• leaves the object perfectly indifferent.

I make a further trial.

    ◦ Instead of removing the relation, I only change it for one of a different kind.
    ◦ I suppose the virtue to belong to my companion, not to myself.
    ◦ I immediately perceive the affections wheel to about.
        ▪ They leave pride, where there is only one relation of impressions.
        ▪ They fall to the side of love, where they are attracted by a double relation of impressions and ideas.
    ◦ By repeating the same experiment in changing anew the relation of ideas, I bring the affections back to pride.
    ◦ By a new repetition, I again place them at love or kindness.

Being fully convinced of the influence of this relation, I try the effects of the other. ◦ By changing virtue for vice, I convert the pleasant impression arising from the former, into the disagreeable one proceeding from the latter. • The effect still answers expectation. ◦ When vice is placed on another, it excites hatred instead of love, by means of its double relations arising from virtue for the same reason. • To continue the experiment, I: ◦ change the relation of ideas anew ◦ suppose the vice to belong to myself. • A subsequent change from hatred to humility follows, as usual. ◦ I convert this humility into pride by a new change of the impression. ◦ I complete the round. ◦ By these changes, I have brought back the passion to that very situation in which I first found it. • I alter the object. • Instead of vice and virtue, I try beauty and deformity, riches and poverty, power and servitude. ◦ Each of these objects runs the circle of the passions in the same way by a change of their relations. • The experiment is not diversified in whatever order we proceed, whether through pride, love, hatred, humility, or through humility, hatred, love, pride. • Esteem and contempt sometimes arise instead of love and hatred. ◦ But these are at the bottom the same passions. ◦ These are only diversified by some causes, which we shall explain afterwards.