Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/157

SPINOZA : A N THROPOLOG Y. 1 35 are added, pleasure and pain. If a thing increases the power of our body to act, the idea of it increases the power of our soul to think, and is gladly imagined by it. Pleasure {IcBtitid) is the transition of a man to a greater, and paia {tristitia) his transition to a lesser perfection. All other emotions are modifications or combinations of the three original ones, to which Spinoza reduces the six of Descartes (cf. p. 105). In the deduction and description of them his procedure is sometimes aridly systematic, some- times even forced and artificial, but for the most part ingenious, appropriate, and psychologically acute. What- ever gives us pleasure augments our being, and whatever pains us diminishes it ; hence we seek to preserve the causes of pleasurable emotions, and love them, to do away with the causes of painful ones, and hate them. " Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause; hate is pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause." Since all that furthers or diminishes the being of (the cause of our pleasure) the object of our love, exercises at the same time a like influence on us, we love that which rejoices the object of our love and hate that which disturbs it ; its happiness and suffering become ours also. The converse is true of the object of our hate : its good fortune provokes us and its ill fortune pleases us. If we are filled with no emotion toward things like ourselves, we sympathize in their sad or joyous feelings by involuntary imitation. Pity, from which we strive to free ourselves as from every painful affection, inclines us to benevolence or to assistance in the removal of the cause of the misery of others. Envy of those who are fortunate, and com- miseration of those who are in trouble, are alike rooted in emulation. Man is by nature inclined to envy and malevolence. Hate easily leads to underestimation, love to overestimation, of the object, and stlf-love to pride or self- satisfaction, which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility. Immoderate desire for honor is termed ambition ; if the desire to please others is kept within due bounds it is praised as unpretentiousness, courtesy, mod- esty {modesiia). Ambition, luxury, drunkenness, avarice, and lust have no contraries, for temperance, sobriety, and