The union of the mind with sensible objects, or on the force and extent of the passions in general

If all those who read this work were willing to take the trouble to reflect a little on what they feel within themselves, it would not be necessary to pause here to show the dependence we have on all sensible objects. I can say nothing on this subject that everyone does not know as well as I, provided they are willing to think about it.

That is why I would very much like to say nothing about it. But because experience teaches me that men often forget themselves so much that they do not even think about what they feel, and do not seek the reasons for what takes place in their minds, I believe I ought to say here certain things that may help them to reflect upon it. I even hope that those who know these things will not be displeased to read them, for although one takes no pleasure in simply hearing about what one knows, one always takes some pleasure in hearing about what one knows and what one feels at the same time.

The most honorable sect of philosophers, and the one whose sentiments many people still pride themselves on embracing, wants to make us believe that it is up to us to be happy. The Stoics continually tell us that we should depend only on ourselves; that we must not grieve over the loss of our honor, our goods, our friends, our relatives; that we must always be even-tempered and without the least anxiety, whatever may happen; that exile, insults, outrages, illnesses, and even death are not evils, and that we must neither fear nor flee them. In short, they tell us an infinite number of similar things, which we are quite inclined to believe, both because our pride makes us love independence, and because reason indeed teaches us that most of the evils that truly afflict us would not be capable of afflicting us if all things were in order.

But God has given us a body, and through this body He has united us to all sensible things. Sin has subjected us to this body, and through our body it has made us dependent on all sensible things. It is the order of nature, it is the will of the Creator, that all the beings He has made should hold together. We are united in some way to the whole universe, and it is the sin of the first man that has made us dependent on all the beings to which God had merely united us. Thus, there is no one now who is not in some way united and at the same time subjected to his body, and through his body to his parents, his friends, his city, his prince, his country, his clothing, his house, his land, his horse, his dog, to the whole earth, to the sun, to the stars, to all the heavens.

It is therefore ridiculous to tell men that it depends on them to be happy, to be wise, to be free; and it is to mock them to seriously warn them not to grieve over the loss of their friends or their goods. For just as it is ridiculous to warn men not to feel pain when they are struck, or not to feel pleasure when they eat with appetite, so the Stoics are not right, or perhaps they are mocking us, when they preach to us not to be afflicted by the death of a father, the loss of our goods, exile, imprisonment, and similar things, and not to rejoice in the happy outcomes of our affairs; for we are united to our country, to our goods, to our parents, etc., by a natural union which at present does not depend on our will.

I readily grant that reason teaches us that we should suffer exile without sadness, but the same reason teaches us that we should also suffer having an arm cut off without pain. The soul is above the body, and according to the light of reason, its happiness or unhappiness should not depend on the body. But experience proves to us enough that things are not as our reason tells us they should be, and it is ridiculous to philosophize against experience.

This is not how Christians philosophize. They do not deny that pain is an evil, that there is distress in the separation of things to which we are united by nature, and that it is difficult to free oneself from the slavery to which sin has reduced us. They agree that it is a disorder for the soul to depend on its body; but they recognize that it does depend on it, and in such a way that it cannot free itself from its dependence except by the grace of JESUS CHRIST: “I feel,” says Saint Paul, “a law in my body that fights against the law of my mind, and that makes me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? It will be the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The Son of God, His apostles, and all His true disciples especially recommend patience, because they know that when one wants to live as a good man, there is much to suffer. In short, true Christians or true philosophers say nothing that is not in accordance with common sense and experience; but all of nature constantly resists the opinion or the pride of the Stoics.

Christians know that to free themselves in some way from the dependence in which they find themselves, they must work to deprive themselves of all those things which they cannot enjoy without pleasure nor be deprived of without pain; that this is the only way to preserve the peace and freedom of the mind that they have received through the grace of their liberator.

The Stoics, on the contrary, following the false ideas of their chimerical philosophy, imagine themselves to be wise and happy, and that one only has to think about virtue and independence in order to become virtuous and independent.

Common sense and experience assure us that the best way not to be wounded by the pain of a sting is not to prick oneself. But the Stoics say: “Prick me, and I, by the force of my mind and with the help of my philosophy, will separate myself from my body in such a way that I will not trouble myself over what goes on in it. I have demonstrative proofs that my happiness does not depend on it, that pain is not an evil; and you will see, by the look on my face and the firm bearing of the rest of my body, that my philosophy renders me invulnerable.”

Their pride sustains their courage, but it does not prevent them from actually suffering pain with anxiety and from being miserable. Thus, the union they have with their body is not destroyed, nor their pain dispelled; but it is that the union they have with other men, strengthened by the desire for their esteem, in some way resists that other union they have with their own body. The visible sight of those who watch them, and to whom they are united, arrests the course of the spirits that accompany the pain, and erases from their face the expression it imprinted there; for if no one were watching them, that air of firmness and freedom of mind would immediately vanish.

Thus the Stoics in some way resist the union they have with their body only by making themselves more slaves to the other men to whom they are united by the passion for glory. It is therefore a constant truth that all men by nature are united to all sensible things, and that through sin they are dependent on them. This is sufficiently recognized by experience, although reason seems to oppose it, and almost all the actions of men are sensible and demonstrative proofs of it.

This union, which is general in all men, is not of equal extent or equal force in all men. For as it follows the knowledge of the mind, one can say that one is not actually united to objects one does not know. A peasant in his cottage does not take part in the glory of his prince and his country, but only in the glory of his village and those around it, because his knowledge extends only that far.

The union of the soul to sensible objects that one has seen and experienced is stronger than the union to those one has only imagined and only heard spoken of. It is through sensation that we unite more closely to sensible things; for sensation produces much greater traces in the brain and excites a much more violent movement of the spirits than mere imagination.

This union is not so strong in those who constantly combat it in order to attach themselves to the goods of the mind, as in others who follow the movements of their passions and allow themselves to be subjected to them, for concupiscence increases and strengthens it.

Finally, different occupations, different conditions, as well as different dispositions of mind, make a considerable difference in the sensible union that men have to the goods of the earth. The great are attached to many more things than others; their slavery has more extent. A general of an army is attached to all his soldiers, because all his soldiers look up to him. It is often this slavery that produces his generosity, and the desire to be esteemed by all those to whom he is in view often obliges him to sacrifice other more sensible or more reasonable desires. It is the same with superiors and those who are in some consideration in the world. It is often vanity that animates their virtue, because the love of glory is ordinarily stronger than the love of truth and justice. I speak here of the love of glory not as a simple inclination, but as a passion, because in fact this love can be sensible and is often accompanied by emotions of the spirits that are quite lively and violent enough.

Different ages and different sexes are also principal causes of the difference in men’s passions. Children do not love the same things as grown men and old men, or they do not love them with as much force and constancy. Women are often attached only to their family and their neighborhood; but men are attached to their whole country; it is for them to defend it; they love high offices, honors, command.

There is such a great variety in the occupations and engagements in which men find themselves that it is impossible to explain it. The disposition of the mind of a married man is not the same as that of a man who is not married. The thought of his family often occupies him almost entirely. Religious persons do not have their minds and hearts turned in the same way as men of the world, nor even as ecclesiastics; they are united to fewer things, but they are naturally more strongly attached to them. One can thus speak in general of the different states in which men find themselves, but one cannot explain in detail the small engagements that are almost all different in each particular person: for it happens quite often that men have particular engagements entirely opposed to those they ought to have in relation to their condition. But although one can express in general the different characters of mind and the different inclinations of men and women, of old people and young people, of rich and poor, of learned and ignorant, finally of different sexes, different ages and different occupations, nevertheless these things are too well known to all those who live in the world and who think about what they see there, for me to swell this book with them. One only needs to open one’s eyes to learn these things agreeably and solidly. For those who prefer to read them in Greek rather than learn them by some reflection on what takes place before their eyes, they can read the second book of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. This is, I believe, the best work of that philosopher, because he says few things in it in which one can be mistaken, and he rarely ventures to prove what he advances in it.

It is therefore evident that this sensible union of men’s minds to everything that has some relation to the preservation of their life or of the society of which they consider themselves parts, is different in different persons, since it is more extensive in those who have more knowledge, who are of higher condition, who have greater occupations and who have a more spacious imagination; and that it is narrower and stronger in those who are more sensitive, who have a livelier imagination, and who follow more blindly the movements of their passions.

It is extremely useful to reflect often on the almost infinite ways in which men are bound to sensible objects; and one of the best means of becoming sufficiently learned in these things is to study and observe oneself. It is through the experience of what we feel within ourselves that we instruct ourselves with complete assurance about all the inclinations of other men, and that we know with some certainty a great part of the passions to which they are subject. If we add to these experiences the knowledge of the particular engagements in which they find themselves and that of the judgments proper to each of the passions of which we shall speak later, we shall perhaps not have as much difficulty in guessing most of their actions as astronomers have in predicting eclipses. For although men are free, it is very rare that they make use of their freedom against their natural inclinations and their violent passions.

It is one of the laws of the union of the soul with the body that all the inclinations of the soul, even those it has for goods that have no relation to the body, are accompanied by emotions of the animal spirits that make these inclinations sensible; because man, not being a pure spirit, cannot have any wholly pure inclination without some mixture of a passion, great or small.

Thus, the love of truth, justice, virtue, of God Himself, is always accompanied by some movements of the spirits that make this love sensible.

This is even if one does not perceive it because one almost always has other more vivid feelings; just as the knowledge of spiritual things is always accompanied by some traces in the brain that make this knowledge more vivid, but ordinarily more confused.

Very often one does not recognize that one is imagining something at the same time as one conceives an abstract truth. The reason is that these truths have no images or traces instituted by nature to represent them, and that all the traces that reveal them have no other relation to them than that which the will of men or chance has placed there. For even arithmeticians and analysts, who consider only abstract things, make great use of their imagination to fix the view of their mind on their ideas. Numbers, letters of the alphabet, and other figures that are seen or imagined are always joined to the ideas they have of things, although the traces that form from these characters have no relation to them, and thus do not render them false or confused; which is why, by a regulated use of numbers and letters, they discover very difficult truths that without this it would be impossible to discover.

Since the ideas of things that can be perceived only by the pure mind can thus be linked with traces in the brain, and since the sight of objects that one loves, hates, or fears by a natural inclination can be accompanied by the movement of the spirits, it is evident that the thought of eternity, the fear of hell, the hope of eternal blessedness, although they are objects that do not strike the senses, can excite violent passions in us.

Thus we can say that we are united in a sensible way not only to all the things that relate to the preservation of life, but also to spiritual things to which the mind is immediately united by itself. It even happens very often that faith, charity, and self-love render this union to spiritual things stronger than that by which we hold to all sensible things. The soul of true martyrs was more united to God than to their bodies; and those who die to support a false religion that they believe to be true, make it sufficiently clear that the fear of hell has more power over them than the fear of death. There is often so much heat and obstinacy on both sides in religious wars and in the defense of superstitions, that one cannot doubt that there is passion, and even a passion much firmer and much more constant than all others, because it is supported by appearances of reason both in those who are deceived and in others.

We are therefore united by our passions to everything that appears to us to be the good or the evil of the mind, as to everything that appears to us to be the good or the evil of the body. There is nothing that we can know to have some relation to us that is not capable of agitating us; and of all the things we know, there is none that does not have some relation to us. We always take some interest even in the most abstract truths when we know them, because at least there is this relation between them and our mind: that we know them. They are ours, so to speak, through our knowledge. We feel wounded when they are attacked; and if we are wounded, it is certain that we are agitated and troubled. Thus the passions have so vast and so extensive a domination that it is impossible to conceive any thing with respect to which one can assure that all men are exempt from their empire.

But let us now see what their nature is, and try to discover all the things they contain.