Desire, Joy, and Sadness

141. Desire, Joy, and Sadness

When desire arises from true knowledge, it cannot be bad, provided:

• that it is not excessive, and
• that this knowledge regulates it.

With regard to the soul

• Joy cannot fail to be good.
• Sadness cannot fail to be bad.

This is because the soul receives:

• all the inconvenience from evil consists through Sadness
• all the enjoyment of the good through Joy

If we had no body, we could not abandon ourselves too much to Love and Joy, nor avoid Hatred and Sadness too much.

If we had no body, we could not abandon ourselves too much to Love and Joy, nor avoid Hatred and Sadness too much.

But the bodily movements that accompany them can all be harmful to health when they are very violent.

On the contrary, they can be useful when they are only moderate.

142. Joy and Love, compared with Sadness and Hatred

Hatred and Sadness should be:

• rejected by the soul even when they arise from true knowledge.
• rejected even more strongly when they come from some false opinion.

Are Love and Joy good or not when they are ill-founded?

If one considers them with regard to the soul, Joy is less solid and Love less advantageous than when they have a better foundation.

Yet they are nevertheless preferable to equally ill-founded Sadness and Hatred.

So that when we are unable to avoid being deceived, we always lean towards passions that tend towards good than towards being cautious of evil.

Often a false Joy is better than a Sadness whose cause is true.

But this is not the same about Love, in relation to Hatred.

When Hatred is just, it only keeps us away from the subject that contains the evil from which it is good to be separated.

Whereas Love, which is unjust, attaches us to things that can harm, or at least that do not deserve to be so highly regarded by us as they are, which degrades and lowers us.

143. The same Passions, insofar as they relate to Desire

What I have just said about these four passions is true only when:

• they are considered precisely in themselves
• they do not lead us to any action.

When they excite Desire in us and that Desire regulates our manners, then:

• all the passions with false causes can harm
• all the passions with just cause can serve

When Joy and Sadness are equally ill-founded, Joy is usually more harmful than Sadness.

This is because Sadness restrains and creates fear. These lead to Prudence.

Whereas Joy makes those who abandon themselves to it inconsiderate and rash.

144. Desires whose outcome depends only on us

These Passions cannot lead us to any action except through the Desire they excite.

We must take care to regulate this kind of Desire.

This is the principal utility of Morality.

It is always good when Morality follows true knowledge.

• It always becomes bad when it is based on some error.

The most common error with Desires is that we do not distinguish between:

• things that depend entirely on us
• things that do not depend on us at all.

For those that depend only on us, that is to say, on our free will, it is enough to know that they are good, in order not to desire them too ardently.

This is because it is following virtue to do the good things that depend on us. It is certain that one cannot have too ardent a Desire for virtue.

Besides, what we desire in this way cannot fail to succeed, since it depends only on us, we always receive all the satisfaction from it that we expected.

But the fault that is usually committed in this matter is never that we desire too much, it is only that we desire too little.

The sovereign remedy for this is to:

• free the mind from all sorts of other Desires that are less useful
• then try to know very clearly the goodness of what is to be desired.