Impudence and Disgust

207. Impudence

Impudence or shamelessness disregards shame and glory. It is not a passion, for it does not involve any particular movement of the spirits within us.

Rather, it is a vice opposed to shame and glory insofar as both are good. This is similar to how:

• ingratitude is opposed to gratitude
• cruelty is opposed to pity

The main cause of impudence lies in having suffered many significant affronts.

Everyone imagines in their youth that praise is a great good and infamy a great evil, much more critical to life than they later find them to be.

After experiencing notable affronts, one may find oneself entirely deprived of honor and despised by everyone.

As a result, those who measure good and evil only by physical comforts observe that they enjoy these comforts just as much, if not more, after disgrace.

Sometimes, disgrace even brings relief from obligations imposed by honor, and when financial loss accompanies disgrace, charitable individuals often provide assistance.

208. Disgust

Disgust is a type of sadness caused by the same source that previously brought joy.

Humans are so constituted that most things we enjoy are beneficial only for a time and later become burdensome.

This is particularly evident in eating and drinking, which are useful only when one has an appetite and harmful when one does not.

When they cease to be pleasant to the taste, this passion is called disgust.

209. Regret

Regret is also a type of sadness, marked by a particular bitterness.

This is because it is always accompanied by some despair and by the memory of the pleasure once derived from possession.

We only regret goods we have enjoyed and that are so lost that we have no hope of recovering them in the manner or at the time we desire.

210. Joy

Joy is a kind of happiness that has a sweetness that is increased by the remembrance of the sufferings one has endured.

This creates a feeling of relief similar to being unburdened of some heavy load that one had carried for a long time.

I do not see anything very remarkable in these three passions.

I have only included them here to follow the order of enumeration that I have made above.