The feeling or sentiment of pride is agreeable; of humility, painful. An agreeable sensation is, therefore, related to the former; a painful, to the latter. And if we find, after examination, that every object, which produces pride, produces also a separate pleasure; and every object, that causes humility, excites in like manner a separate uneasiness; we must allow, in that case, that the present theory is fully proved and ascertained.
The relation of causality is evident and immediate: what pleases me flatters my pride, what is painful generates humility. Hume’s demonstration is both eloquent and succint: he simply procedes by sufficient reason, needing nothing more to validate his conclusion.
This duality is imoprtant, since Hume will always relate to the Self through these two feelings. How could one understand love without first knowing the workings of the passions, and the nature of these relations?