How Generosity Can Be Acquired

160. What is the movement of the spirits in these Passions?

Pride and baseness are not only vices but also passions, as their effects are very visible externally.

People ask whether the virtues of generosity and humility also passions because:

• their movements are less apparent
• virtue does not seem to align as closely with passion as vice does.

I answer that the same movement of the spirits that strengthens a thought when it has an unjust foundation can also strengthen it when it has a just one.

Pride and generosity both consist of a good opinion of oneself.

They onlydiffer in that this opinion is:

• unjust in pride
• just in generosity

This is why they are the same passion.

This passion is triggered by a movement composed of admiration, joy, and love—for oneself as well as for the quality that causes self-esteem.

Conversely, the movement that triggers humility, whether virtuous or vicious, is composed of admiration, sadness, and self-love mixed with hatred for the faults that cause self-contempt.

Admiration has 2 properties:

1. Surprise makes it strong at the beginning

This is much more evident in pride and baseness than in generosity and virtuous humility.

2. Surprise is steady in its continuation – the spirits continue to move at a constant rate in the brain.

This is more noticeable in the latter than in the former because:

• vice generally arises from ignorance.
• those who know themselves the least are the most prone to becoming excessively proud or humble.

This is because everything new surprises them, leading them to attribute it to themselves, which causes admiration and makes them either esteem or despise themselves based on whether they judge the event to their advantage or not.

However, because one thing that inflates them with pride is often followed by another that humiliates them, the movement of their passion is variable.

In contrast, there is nothing in generosity that is incompatible with virtuous humility, nor is there anything external that can alter them.

This makes their movements firm, constant, and always very similar to themselves. They are less influenced by surprise, as those who esteem themselves in this way are well aware of the causes of their self-esteem.

Nevertheless, these causes are so marvelous—namely, the power of free will that leads one to esteem oneself and the frailties of the subject in which this power resides, which prevent one from overestimating oneself—that whenever one reflects on them anew, they always inspire fresh admiration.

161. How Generosity Can Be Acquired

Virtues are habits of the soul that dispose it toward certain thoughts, making them distinct from these thoughts yet capable of producing them, and vice versa.

These thoughts can be produced by the soul alone but are often strengthened by some movement of the spirits, making them both actions of virtue and passions of the soul.

Thus, although no virtue seems to depend as much on noble birth as the one that leads people to value themselves only according to their true worth, and although it is easy to believe that not all souls placed in our bodies by God are equally noble and strong (which is why I have named this virtue generosity, following the usage of our language, rather than magnanimity, as it is less known in scholarly terms), it is nevertheless certain that good upbringing greatly helps to correct the flaws of birth.

By frequently reflecting on the nature of free will and the great benefits that come from a firm resolution to use it well—as well as, conversely, on the vanity and futility of the efforts that trouble the ambitious—one can stir up the passion of generosity and thus acquire the virtue of generosity.

Since it is the key to all other virtues and a general remedy against all disorders of the passions, I believe this reflection is well worth noting.

162. Veneration

Veneration, or respect, is an inclination of the soul not only to esteem the object it reveres but also to submit to it with some fear, in an effort to win its favor.

We feel veneration only for free causes that we judge capable of doing us good or harm without knowing which they will choose.

For those from whom we expect only good, we feel love and devotion rather than mere veneration, and for those from whom we expect only harm, we feel hatred.

If we do not judge the cause of this good or harm to be free, we do not submit to it in hopes of securing its favor.

Thus, when people once venerated woods, fountains, or mountains, they were not properly revering these lifeless things but the deities they believed presided over them.

The movement of the spirits that stirs this passion is composed of the movement that excites admiration and the one that excites fear, which I will discuss later.

163. Contempt

Contempt is the inclination of the soul to scorn a free cause by judging that, although it is capable by nature of doing good or harm, it is nonetheless so far beneath us that it cannot do either.

The movement of the spirits that stirs this is composed of those that excite admiration and those that excite security or boldness.

164. The Use of These Two Passions

Generosity and weakness or baseness of spirit determine the good or bad use of these two passions. The nobler and more generous the soul, the more inclined it is to give everyone their due.

Thus, such a soul has profound humility toward God and readily gives all the honor and respect due to people, according to their rank and authority in the world, while despising nothing but vice.

Conversely, those with weak and base spirits tend to err excessively, sometimes by revering and fearing things that deserve only contempt and sometimes by insolently scorning things most worthy of reverence.

They often oscillate rapidly between extreme impiety and superstition, then back to impiety, so that there is no vice or disorder of the mind of which they are not capable.