13. Envy.-Envy is an uneasiness of the mind, caused by the consideration of a good we desire, obtained by one we think should not have had it before us. 14. What Passions all Men have.-These two last, envy and anger, not being caused by pain and pleasure, simply in themselves, but having in them some mixed considerations of ourselves and others, are not therefore to be found in all men,t because those other parts of valuing their merits, or intending revenge, is wanting in them: but all the rest, terminating purely in pain and pleasure, are, I think, to be found in all men. For we love, desire, rejoice, and hope, only in respect of pleasure; we hate, fear, and grieve, only in respect of pain ultimately: in fine, all these passions are moved by things, only as they appear to be the causes of pleasure and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some way or other annexed to them. Thus we extend our hatred usually to the subject (at least, if a sensible or voluntary agent) which has produced pain in us, because the fear it leaves is a constant pain: but we do not so constantly love what has done us good; because pleasure operates not so strongly on us as pain, and because we are not so ready to have hope it will do so again. But this by the by. 15. Pleasure and Pain, what.-By pleasure and pain, delight and uneasiness, I must all along be understood (as I have above intimated).to mean not only bodily pain and pleasure, but whatsoever delight or uneasiness is felt by us, Conf. Arist. Rhet. 1. ii. c. 2; and Hobbes, De Homine, c. xvii. § 1.)— ED. دو 66 *See Arist. Rhet. 1. ii. c. 10. "Dolor ob prælatum sibi alium, conjunctus cum conatu proprio, est æmulatio: sed conjunctus cum voluntate prælatum sibi retrahendi, invidia est.” (Hobbes, De Homine, c. xii. §. 11.) "L'orgueil qui nous inspire tant d'envie nous sert souvent ainsi à la modérer. (Rochefoucault, Reflex. 348.) Socrates defined envy to be a wound of the soul. "EXкos kivaι Tñs Vuxns." (Stob. Gaisf. Tit. xxxviii. § 48.) Anaximenes said, that they who are determined by envy in their judgments, awarded the palm rather to the worst than to the best men: “ Οἱ γαρ μέτα φθόνου κρίνοντες, τὸ πρωτεῖον απονέμουσι τοῖς χειριστοις οὗ τοῖς βελ τίσ τους. (Idem. 44.) And Thucydides describes envy as the antagonist of the living, but the honourer of the dead. “ φθόνος τοῖς ζῶσι πρὸς τὸ ἀντιπαλον τὸ δε μὴ ἐμποδὼν ἀνανταγωνιστῳ ευνοίᾳ τετίμηται. (II. 45.)—ED. This is erroneous: the elements of all human passions are in all men; but in some are developed more, in others less. That is the whole difference.-Ed. whether arising from any grateful or unacceptable sensation or reflection. 16. It is further to be considered, that, in reference to the passions, the removal or lessening of a pain is considered, and operates as a pleasure: and the loss or diminishing of a pleasure as a pain. 17. Shame. The passions, too, have most of them in most persons operations on the body, and cause various changes in it; which not being always sensible, do not make a necessary part of the idea of each passion. For shame, which is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought of having done something which is indecent, or will lessen the valued esteem which others have for us, has not always blushing accompanying it. 18. These Instances to show how our Ideas of the Passions are got from Sensation and Reflection.-I would not be mistaken here, as if I meant this as a discourse of the passions: they are many more than those I have here named; and those I have taken notice of would each of them require a much larger and more accurate discourse.* I have only mentioned these here as so many instances of modes of pleasure and pain resulting in our minds from various con *This larger and more accurate discourse, as 1 have before said, will be found in Aristotle, Rhet. 1. ii. &c.: but for a brief and pithy description of most of the passions, I know of no. writer to be compared with Hobbes. "The comparison," he says, "of the life of man to a race, though it hold not in every part, yet it holdeth so well for this our purpose, that we may thereby both see and remember almost all the passions before mentioned. But this race we must suppose to have no other goal nor other garland but being foremost: and in it, to endeavour, is appetite-to be remiss, is sensuality-to consider them behind, is gloryto consider them before, is humility-to lose ground with looking back, is vainglory-to be holden, is hatred-to turn back, repentance to be in breath, hope to be weary, despair-to endeavour to overtake the next, emulation-to supplant or overthrow, envy-to resolve to break through a stop foreseen, courage to break through a sudden stop, anger to break through with ease, magnanimity to lose ground by little hinderances, pusillanimity-to fall on the sudden, is disposition to weep-to see another fall, is disposition to laugh-to see one outgone when we would not, is pity-to see one outgo whom we would not, is indignation to hold fast by another, is to love-to carry him on who so holdeth, is charity-to hurt one's self for haste, is shame continually to be outgone, is misery-continually to outgo the next before, is felicityand to forsake the course, is to die." (Human Nature, c. ix. §. 21.)— ED. siderations of good and evil. I might perhaps have instanced in other modes of pleasure and pain more simple than these, as the pain of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of eating and drinking to remove them; the pain of tender eyes, and the pleasure of music; pain from captious uninstructive wrangling, and the pleasure of rational conversation with a friend, or of well-directed study in the search and discovery of truth. But the passions being of much more concernment to us, I rather made choice to instance in them, and show how the ideas we have of them are derived from sensation and reflection. CHAPTER XXI. OF POWER. 1. This Idea how got.—THE mind being every day informed by the senses of the alteration of those simple ideas it observes in things without, and taking notice how one comes to an end, and ceases to be, and another begins to exist which was not before; reflecting also on what passes within itself, and observing a constant change of its ideas, sometimes by the impression of outward objects on the senses, and sometimes by the determination of its own choice; and concluding from what it has so constantly observed to have been, that the like changes will for the future be made in the same things, by like agents, and by the like ways; considers in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and in another the possibility of making that change and so comes by that idea which we call power. Thus we say, fire has a power to melt gold, i. e., to destroy the consistency of its insensible parts, and consequently its hardness, and make it fluid; and gold has a power to be melted: that the sun has a power to blanch wax, and wax a power to be blanched by the sun, whereby the yellowness is destroyed, and whiteness made to exist in its room. In which, and the like cases, the power we consider is in reference to the change of perceivable ideas; for we cannot observe any alteration to be made in, or operation upon, anything, but by the observable change of its sensible ideas; nor conceive any : * * This subject has been treated of at large by Aristotle, Metaphysic, 1. viii. c. 1, et seq.-ED. alteration to be made, but by conceiving a change of some of its ideas.* 2. Power, actice and passive.-Power, thus considered, is two-fold; viz., as able to make, or able to receive, any change: the one may be called active, and the other passive power. Whether matter be not wholly destitute of active power, as its author, God, is truly above all passive power; and whether the intermediate state of created spirits be not that alone which is capable of both active and passive power, may be worth consideration.t, I shall not now enter into that in * Here the word idea is used for form, which is a cause of confusion. Upon this hint Berkeley seems to have based his whole theory. (I. p. 41,) -ED. + On the nature of angels, see Le Grand, Part iii. p. 110, et seq. On the nature and powers of the human soul, there is a splendid passage in Dr. Thomas Burnet's extraordinary work, De Statu Mortuorum et Resurgentium: "In animâ, præter cogitationes, aut vim cogitandi, nihil omnino experimus aut deprehendimus. Quicquid agit anima, sive in seipsâ, sive exterius, non tactu aut impulsu agit, sed vi alicujus cogitationis: intellectus, voluntatis, appetitûs, aut alterius nominis. Et cùm patitur, sive à seipsâ, sive exterius, ea etiam est species aliqua cogitationis. Ut nihil prorsus in mente nostrâ reperiamus, præter varios modos aut vim cogitandi. Quòd si integra natura animæ, et essentia, ut dicunt, in cogitatione consistat, est essentialiter vita et in desinentes activa vel sui conscia: nec perire potest aliter quam annihilatione." (c. iii. p. 16.) Berkeley according to whose theory nothing exists save spirits and the ideas excited in them, entertained several very extraordinary notions respecting the nature of these entities. In the first place, he maintains, that spirit is a proper object of knowledge: "ideas, spirits, and relations, are all, in their respective kinds, the objects of human knowledge. (Principles of Human Knowledge, § 89.) He next acknowledges the existence of numerous orders of spirits superior to man; the easiness of his belief in this respect, equalling the vigour of his incredulity in respect to matter:-"That there are a great variety of spirits of different orders and capacities, whose faculties, both in number and extent, are far exceeding those the Author of my being has bestowed on me, see no reason to deny."($ 81.) But however firmly he may believe in the existence of spirit, he confesses that we know it only in the same way as we know of the existence of matter, that is to say, by its effects: "such is the nature of spirit, or that which acts, that it cannot be of itself perceived but only by the effects which it produceth." (§ 27.) Again: "We cannot know the existence of other spirits, otherwise than by their operations, or the ideas by them excited in us." (§ 145.) Which is true: but in § 16 et seq. he ridicules our concluding the existence of matter in the same way, because its essence is inconceivable. Occasionally he appears inclined to think that we are further advanced in the science of spirit than philosophers usually admit: "With regard to spirits, perhaps human knowledge is not quiry, 'my present business being not to search into the original of power, but how we come by the idea of it. But since active powers make so great a part of our complex ideas of natural substances, (as we shall see hereafter,) and I mention them as such according to common apprehension; yet they being not perhaps so truly active powers as our hasty thoughts are apt to represent them, I judge it not amiss, by this intimation, to direct our minds to the consideration of God and spirits, for the clearest idea of active powers. 3. Power includes Relation.-I confess power includes in it some kind of relation, (a relation to action or change,) as indeed, which of our ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not? For our ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in them a secret relation of the parts? Figure and motion have something relative in them much more visibly: and sensible qualities, as colours and smells, &c., what are they but the powers of different bodies, in relation to our perception, &c.? And, so deficient as is vulgarly imagined." (§ 135.) But how it would be possible to be more ignorant of a thing than to have no idea whatever of it, it were difficult to say; and yet such in Berkeley's opinion is one condition with respect to spirit. "The great reason that is assigned for our being thought ignorant of the nature of spirit, is our not having an idea of it. But surely it ought not to be looked on as a defect in a human understanding, that it does not perceive the idea of spirit, if it is manifestly impossible that there should be any such idea." (§ 135.) But however impossible it may be, it afterwards turns out that we have actually some notion of the thing, though we have no idea. "We may be said to have some knowledge or notion of our own minds, of spirits and active beings, whereof, in a strict sense, we have not ideas." (§ 89.) Again: "It must be owned that we have some notion of soul, spirit, and the operations of the mind, such as willing, loving, hating; inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning of those words. (§ 27.) Elsewhere the impossibility is more completely got over, for we find ourselves in possession even of an idea of spirit. "In a large sense, indeed, we may be said to have an idea (or rather, he adds, a notion) of spirit." (§ 140.) But how, in any sense, large or small, we can be said to have an idea of that of which it is impossible we should have an idea, I undertake not to determine. Pushed to its fullest extent, Berkeley's theory considerably narrows the domain of philosophy there is no matter, he says, of which to form an idea; strictly speaking, we can form no idea of spirit of what is it then that we can form an idea? His arguments go directly to prove that animals are spirits for everything, he affirms, which thinks and perceives is a spirit now animals think and perceive, therefore the elephant and rhinoceros are spiritual existences.-ED. : |