Page:Short Treatise on God, Man and His Wellbeing.djvu/252

thereof,^[1] be it true or false: *falsity arising thus,* namely, because, when we happen to know something *or a part* of an object, we imagine^[2] that the object (although we only know very little of it) nevertheless affirms or denies that of itself as a whole; this takes place mostly in feeble souls, which receive very easily a mode or^[3] an idea through a slight action of the object, and make no further affirmation or denial apart from this.

Lastly, it might also be objected that there are many things which we *sometimes* want and [sometimes also] do not want,^[4] as, for example, to assert something about a thing or not to assert it, to speak the truth, and not to speak it, and so forth. But this results from the fact that Desire is not adequately distinguished from Will.^[5] For the Will, according to those who maintain that there is a Will, is only the activity of the understanding whereby we affirm or deny something about a thing, with regard to good or evil. Desire, however, is the disposition of the soul to obtain or to do something for the sake of the good or evil that is discerned therein; so that even after we have made an affirmation or denial about the thing, Desire still remains, namely, when we have ascertained or affirmed that the thing

1. A: ... the cause of that about which something is affirmed or denied; B: the cause of our affirmation or denial thereof, ...
2. B continues: that the whole is such ; this takes place ...
3. B omits "a mode or."
4. B continues: or about which we [sometimes] assert some thing, and [sometimes] do not assert it ...
5. B continues as follows: For, although they are both of them an affirmation or denial of a thing, they nevertheless differ in this that the last occurs without regard, and the first with reference, to the good or evil which is discerned in the thing: so that, even after we have made the affirmation or denial about the thing, the Desire itself remains, namely, to obtain or to do what we have ascertained or affirmed to be good, so that the Will may well exist without the Desire, but not the Desire without the Will.