The Various Kinds of Desire

88. What are the various kinds of desire?

There would be more reason to distinguish Desire into as many different species as there are different objects that one pursues.

For example, Curiosity, which is nothing other than a Desire for knowledge, differs greatly from the Desire for glory, and this one from the Desire for vengeance, and so on with others.

But it suffices here to know that there are as many as there are species of Love or Hatred; and that the most considerable and strongest are those which arise from Pleasure and Horror.

89. What is the Desire that arises from Horror?

The same Desire tends towards the pursuit of a good and towards the avoidance of the evil that is contrary to it.

The Desire that arises from Pleasure nevertheless remains very different from that which arises from Horror.

For this Pleasure and this Horror, which are truly contrary, are not the good and the evil that serve as objects for these Desires, but only two emotions of the soul, which dispose it to pursue two very different things.

Namely, Horror is instituted by Nature to represent to the soul a sudden and unexpected death: so that, even though it may sometimes be only the touch of a worm, or the sound of a trembling leaf, or its shadow, that causes Horror, one immediately feels as much emotion as if a very evident peril of death presented itself to the senses.

This immediately gives rise to agitation, which leads the soul to employ all its forces to avoid such a present evil.

It is this kind of Desire, commonly called Flight or Aversion.

90. What is that which arises from Pleasure?

On the contrary, Pleasure is particularly instituted by Nature to represent the enjoyment of that which pleases, as the greatest of all goods that belong to man: which causes one to desire this enjoyment very ardently.

There are various kinds of Pleasures. The Desires that arise from them are not all equally powerful.

For example, the beauty of flowers only incites us to look at them, and that of fruits to eat them.

But the principal one is that which comes from the perfections that one imagines in a person, whom one thinks could become another oneself.

Nature has placed the difference of sex in humans and in animals that do not have reason.

It has also placed certain impressions in the brain, which make one consider oneself at a certain age and time as defective, and as if one is only half of a whole, of which a person of the other sex must be the other half.

This makes the acquisition of this half is confusedly represented by Nature as the greatest of all imaginable goods.

One sees several persons of the other sex. But one does not wish for several at the same time, because Nature does not make one imagine that one needs more than one half.

But when one notices something in one person that pleases more than what one notices at the same time in others, that determines the soul to feel for that one alone, all the inclination that Nature gives it to seek the good, which it represents to it as the greatest that one can possess.

This inclination or Desire that arises thus from Pleasure is called by the name of Love, more commonly than the Passion of Love, which has been described above. Also, it has more strange effects, and it is this which serves as the principal subject matter for the makers of Romances and Poets.