A Treatise of Human Nature · Chapter
Section X: Of Curiosity, or the Love of Truth explained
Hume investigates the passion of curiosity, or the love of truth, which he identifies as the original source of all inquiry.
What happens
Hume investigates the passion of curiosity, or the love of truth, which he identifies as the original source of all inquiry. He distinguishes between two kinds of truth: relations of ideas and matters of fact. He argues that the pleasure derived from truth is not solely from its discovery but from the exercise of genius and the importance of the truth. He explains that the utility of truth supports the imagination and fixes attention, and he draws parallels between philosophy, hunting, and gaming to illustrate that the pleasure comes from the activity and the pursuit, not merely the end. He also explores a different kind of curiosity, the desire to know the actions of others, which arises from the uneasiness caused by doubt and the pleasure of belief's stability.
Themes in this chapter
Passions and the Self
Hume explores the passion of curiosity as a distinct affection, examining its causes and mechanisms, and how it relates to pleasure and pain.
Sympathy and Social Influence
Hume suggests that the pleasure in surveying fortifications arises from sympathy with the inhabitants, even if one is a stranger or enemy, indicating the role of sympathy in aesthetic and intellectual pleasures.
Characters to notice
- David Hume
The author, who analyzes the passion of curiosity and its origins.
Key passages
“Human life is so tiresome a scene, and men generally are of such indolent dispositions, that whatever amuses them, though by a passion mixed with pain, does in the main give them a sensible pleasure.”
Life is boring and people are lazy, so anything that entertains them, even if it involves some pain, generally gives them real pleasure.
Hume explains why people enjoy activities like gaming and hunting, which involve difficulty and uncertainty.
“It is a quality of human nature, which is conspicuous on many occasions, and is common both to the mind and body, that too sudden and violent a change is unpleasant to us, and that however any objects may in themselves be indifferent, yet their alteration gives uneasiness.”
A notable trait of human nature, seen in both mind and body, is that sudden and drastic changes are unpleasant; even if objects are neutral, their change causes discomfort.
Hume uses this principle to explain why doubt, which causes mental variation, is painful.
“To make the parallel betwixt hunting and philosophy more complete, we may observe, that though in both cases the end of our action may in itself be despised, yet in the heat of the action we acquire such an attention to this end, that we are very uneasy under any disappointments, and are sorry when we either miss our game, or fall into any error in our reasoning.”
To fully compare hunting and philosophy, we see that even if the goal itself is trivial, during the activity we become so focused on it that we are upset by failure, whether missing game or making a reasoning error.
Hume illustrates that the pleasure in both activities comes from the pursuit, not the end result.