III.—Concerning Mental Affections
The actions of the mind arise from adequate ideas alone; but the passions depend on those alone which are inadequate. The essence of the mind is composed of adequate and inadequate ideas. Joy is a passion by which the mind passes to a greater degree of perfection; sorrow is a passion by which it passes to a lesser degree.
Accidentally anything may be the cause of joy, sorrow, or desire. We love or hate certain things not from any known cause, but merely from sympathy or antipathy. If we hate a thing, we seek to affirm concerning it everything that we think can affect it with sorrow, while we deny everything that we think can affect it with joy. From this we see how easily a man may think too much of himself, and of the object which he loves, and on the other hand, may think too little of what he hates.
When a man thinks too much of himself this imagination is termed pride, and is a species of delirium, because he dreams with his eyes open, that he can do all those things to which he attains in imagination alone, regarding them thus as realities, and rejoicing in them so long as he cannot imagine anything to exclude their existence and limit his power of action.
If we imagine that a person loves, desires, or hates a thing which we love, desire, or hate, we shall on that account love, desire, or hate the thing more intensely. If, on the other hand, we imagine that he is averse to the thing we love, or loves the thing to which we are averse, then we shall suffer vacillation of mind. Hence every one strives to the utmost to induce others to love what he loves and to hate what he hates. This effort is called ambition, which prompts each person to desire that others should live according to his way of thinking. But if all thus act, then all hinder each other. And if all wish to be praised or loved by all, then all hate one another.
Joy is a man's passage from a less to a greater perfection; sorrow is a man's passage from a greater to a less perfection. I say passage, for joy is not perfection itself. If a man were born with the perfection to which he passes, he would possess it without the affection of joy—a truth the more vividly apparent from the affection of sorrow which is the contrary of joy.
For, that sorrow consists in the passage to a less perfection, but not in the less perfection itself, no one can deny, since in so far as a man partakes of any perfection, he cannot be sad.
Nor can we say that sorrow consists in the passage to a less perfection, for privation is nothing. But the affection of sorrow is actual, and so can be nothing else than the passage to a lesser perfection, that is, the reality by which the power of acting is limited or diminished. As for the definitions of cheerfulness, pleasurable excitement, melancholy, or grief, I omit these, because they are related rather to the body than to the mind, and are merely different species of joy and sorrow.
Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause. Hatred is sorrow with the accompanying idea of an external cause. Devotion is love towards an object which we admire and wonder at. Derision is joy arising from the imagination that something we despise is present in the object we hate. Hope is a joy not constant, arising from the idea of something future or past, about the issue of which we are doubtful. Fear is sorrow not constant, arising in like manner.