Of magnanimity and pusillanimity.
20. Magnanimity is no more than glory, of the which I have spoken in the first section; but glory well grounded upon certain experience of a power sufficient to attain his end in open manner. And pusillanimity is the doubt of that. Whatsoever therefore is a sign of vain glory, the same is also a sign of pusillanimity: for sufficient power maketh glory a spur to one’s end. To be pleased or displeased with fame true or false, is a sign of that same, because he that relieth on fame hath not his success in his own power. Likewise art and fallacy are signs of pusillanimity, because they depend not upon our own power, but the ignorance of others. Also proneness to anger, because it argueth difficulty of proceeding. Also ostentation of ancestors, because all men are more inclined to make shew of their own power when they have it, than of another’s. To be at enmity and contention with inferiors, is a sign of the same, because it proceedeth from want of power to end the war. To laugh at others, because it is an affectation of glory from other men’s infirmities, and not from any ability of their own. Also irresolution, which proceedeth from want of power enough to contemn the little difficulties that make deliberations hard.
A view of the passions represented in a race.
21. The comparison 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 glory.
- To consider them before, is humility.
- To lose ground with looking back, vain glory.
- To be holden, 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 hindrances, pusillanimity.
- To fall on the sudden, is disposition to weep.
- To see another fall, is disposition to laugh.
- To see one out-gone whom we would not, is pity.
- To see one out-go whom we would not, is indignation.
- To hold fast by another, is to love.
- To carry him on that so holdeth, is charity.
- To hurt one’s-self for haste, is shame.
- Continually to be out-gone, is misery.
- Continually to out-go the next before, is felicity.
- And to forsake the course, is to die.
CHAPTER X.
1. Having shewed in the precedent chapters, that sense proceedeth from the action of external objects upon the brain, or some internal substance of the head; and that the passions proceed from the alteration there made, and continued to the heart: it is consequent in the next place, seeing the diversity of degrees in knowledge in divers men, to be greater than may be ascribed to the divers tempers of their brain, to declare what other causes may produce such odds, and excess of capacity, as we daily observe in one man above another. As for that difference which ariseth from sickness, and such accidental distempers, I omit the same, as impertinent to this place, and consider it only in such as have their health, and organs well disposed. If the difference were in the natural temper of the brain, I can imagine no reason why the same should not appear first and most of all in the senses, which being equal both in the wise and less wise, infer an equal temper in the common organ (namely the brain) of all the senses.
2. But we see by experience, that joy and grief proceed not in all men from the same causes, and that men differ very much in the constitution of the body; whereby, that which helpeth and furthereth vital constitution in one, and is therefore delightful, hindereth it and crosseth it in another, and therefore causeth grief. The difference therefore of wits hath its original from the different passions, and from the ends to which the appetite leadeth them.
3. And first, those men whose ends are sensual delight, and generally are addicted to ease, food, onerations and exonerations of the body, must needs be the less thereby delighted with those imaginations that conduce not to those ends, such as are imaginations of honour and glory, which, as I have said before, have respect to the future: for sensuality consisteth in the pleasure of the senses, which please only for the present, and take away the inclination to observe such things as conduce to honour, and consequently maketh men less curious, and less ambitious, whereby they less consider the way either to knowledge or other power; in which two consisteth all the excellency of power cognitive. And this is it which men call dulness, and proceedeth from the appetite of sensual or bodily delight. And it may well be conjectured, that such passion hath its beginning from a grossness and difficulty of the motion of the spirit about the heart.