Treatise... book 2.3

I think what Hume meant by “Reason is… the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” is that just because reason may tell an obese person that he/she must lose weight, that person will not “automatically” lose weight or become motivated to do so. Nor does it have anything to do with “willpower”; when one of the two desires/passions (healthiness and appetite for one’s favorite foods) eclipses the other, the stronger desire/passion will always win out.

“But again, as facility converts pain into pleasure, so it often converts pleasure into pain, when it is too great, and renders the actions of the mind so faint and languid, that they are no longer able to interest and support it.” (2.3.5.4)

Normally Hume’s language is very clear to me, but this passage seems vague to me. I know it has something to do with custom, but its exact meaning escapes me.

“…tho’ distance both in space and time has a considerable effect on the imagination, and by that means on the will and passions, yet the consequence of a removal in space are much inferior to those of a removal in time. Twenty years are certainly but a small distance in time… yet I doubt if a thousand leagues, or the greatest distance of place this globe can admit of, will so remarkably weaken our ideas, and diminish our passions.” (2.3.7.4)

Very interesting! Distance has little effect on ideas (which is certainly true in our own age of information), but time can greatly distort or diminish them! A good example of this is the case of Nietzsche: his later works were extensively edited by his anti-Semitic sister, who later supported the Nazi party; for this reason alone Nietzsche’s works were shunned in the mid-20th century, yet today they are again praised as intellectual achievements. (Please correct me if I am wrong in any of this!)