Love and Aversion

Their Principal Species

Love and aversion are the first passions that succeed admiration. We do not consider an object for long without discovering the relations it has with us, or with something that we love. The object that we love, and to which consequently we are united by our love, being almost always present to us as well as the one we are currently admiring, our mind makes, without effort and without deep reflection, the comparisons necessary to discover the relations they have with each other and with us, or else it is naturally alerted to them by prepossessing feelings of pleasure and pain; and then the movement of love that we have for ourselves and for the object we love extends to the one we admire, if the relation it has immediately with us, or with something united to us, appears advantageous to us either through knowledge or through feeling; now this new movement of the soul, or rather this newly determined movement of the soul, being joined to that of the animal spirits and followed by the feeling that accompanies the new disposition that this new movement of spirit produces in the brain, is the passion here called love.

But if we feel through some pain, or if we discover through clear and evident knowledge that the union or relation of the object we admire is disadvantageous to us, or to something united to us, then the movement of love that we have for ourselves and for the thing united to us is contained within us or turns toward it; it does not follow the mind’s vision, it does not spread toward the object of our admiration. But since the movement toward the good in general that the author of nature continuously impresses upon the soul carries it only toward what one knows and feels as good or as suitable to our nature, one can say that the refusal of the soul to approach and unite with an object that does not suit it at all is a kind of voluntary movement whose term is nothingness; now this voluntary movement of the soul, being joined to that of the spirits and the blood, and followed by the feeling that accompanies the new disposition that this movement of spirit produces in the brain, is the passion here called aversion.

This passion is entirely contrary to love, but it is never without love; it is entirely contrary to love, for it separates, and love unites; it has nothingness as its term, and love always has being as its object; it resists the natural movement and renders it useless, and love abandons itself to it and renders it victorious. But it is never separated from love; for if the evil that is its object is taken as the privation of good, to flee evil is to flee the privation of good, that is to say, to tend toward good; and thus the aversion to the privation of good is the love of good. But if evil is taken as pain, the aversion to pain is not the aversion to the privation of pleasure, since pain, being a feeling as real as pleasure, is not its privation; but the aversion to pain being the aversion to some inner misery, one would not have this aversion if one did not love oneself: finally, evil can be taken for what causes pain in us, or for what deprives us of good; and then aversion depends on the love of ourselves, or on the love of something with which we wish to be united. Love and aversion are therefore the two mother-passions opposed to each other; but love is the first, the principal, and the most universal.

In moral philosophy, one often distinguishes virtues or species of charities by the difference of objects; but this sometimes confuses the true idea one should have of virtue, which depends rather on the end one proposes to oneself than on anything else. Thus we do not believe we should do the same with the passions: we will not distinguish them here by objects, because a single object can excite them all, and ten thousand objects can excite only one and the same; for although objects may differ from one another, they are not always different in relation to us, and they do not excite different passions in us. A promised marshal’s baton is different from a promised crozier; however, these two marks of honor excite roughly the same passion in the ambitious, because they awaken in the mind the same idea of good: but a marshal’s baton that is promised, granted, possessed, taken away, excites entirely different passions, because it awakens in the mind different ideas of good.

We must not therefore multiply the passions according to the different objects that cause them, but we must admit only as many as there are accessory ideas that accompany the principal idea of good or evil, and that change it considerably in relation to us. For the general idea of good or the sensation of pleasure, which is a good to the one who experiences it, agitating the soul and the animal spirits, produces the general passion of love, and the accessory ideas of this good determine the general agitation of the soul and the course of the animal spirits in a particular manner that places the mind and the body in the disposition they should be in with respect to the good one perceives, and they thus produce all the particular passions.

Thus, the general idea of good produces an indeterminate love, which is only a consequence of self-love or of the natural desire to be happy.

The idea of the good that one possesses produces a love of joy.

The idea of a good that one does not possess, but that one hopes to possess, that is to say, that one judges one can possess, produces a love of desire.

Finally, the idea of a good that one does not possess and that one does not hope to possess, or, what amounts to the same, the idea of a good that one does not hope to possess without the loss of some other, or that one cannot keep once one possesses it, produces a love of sadness. These are the three simple or primitive passions that have good as their object, for hope, which produces joy, is not an emotion of the soul, but a simple judgment.

But one should note that men do not limit their being to themselves, and that they extend it to all the things and all the persons with whom it seems advantageous to them to unite. So that one should conceive that they possess in some manner a good, when their friends enjoy it, although they do not possess it immediately themselves. Thus, when I say that the possession of good produces joy, I do not mean it only of immediate possession or union, but of any other, for we naturally feel joy when some good fortune happens to those we love.

Evil can be taken in three ways:

1. The privation of good

Here the idea of evil being the same as the idea of a good that one does not possess, it is visible that this idea produces sadness, or desire, or even joy, for joy is always excited when one feels oneself delivered from the privation of good, that is to say, when one possesses the good. So that the passions that regard evil taken in this sense are the same as those that regard good, because in effect they also have good as their object.

2. Pain

Pain is always a real evil to the one who suffers it at the time he suffers it, then the feeling of this evil produces the passions of sadness and desire for the annihilation of this evil, passions that are species of aversion and not of love, for their movement is entirely opposed to that which accompanies the sight of good, this movement being only the opposition of the soul that resists the natural impression, that is to say, a movement whose term is nothingness.

The actual feeling of pain produces an aversion of sadness.

The pain that one does not suffer, but that one fears suffering, produces an aversion of desire whose term is the nothingness of this pain.

3. The thing that causes the privation of good or that produces pain

Finally, the pain that one does not suffer and that one does not fear suffering, or, what amounts to the same, the pain that one does not dread suffering without some great reward, or the pain from which one feels delivered, produces an aversion of joy. These are the three simple or primitive passions that have evil as their object, for fear, which produces sadness, is not an emotion of the soul, but a simple judgment.

Finally, if by evil one means the person or thing that deprives us of good or that makes us suffer pain, the idea of evil produces a movement of love and aversion together, or simply a movement of aversion. The idea of evil produces a movement of love and aversion together, when the evil is what deprives us of good, for it is by one and the same movement that one tends toward good and that one draws away from what prevents its possession. But this idea produces only a movement of aversion, when it is the idea of an evil that makes us suffer pain, because it is by one and the same movement of aversion that one hates the pain and the one who causes us to suffer it.

Thus, there are three simple or primitive passions that regard good, and as many others that regard pain or the one who causes it, namely: joy, desire, and sadness. For one feels joy when good is present or when evil has passed; one feels sadness when good has passed and evil is present, and one is agitated by desire when good and evil are future.

The passions that regard good are particular determinations of the movement that God gives us for the good in general, and that is why their object is real; but the others, which do not have God as the cause of their movement, have only nothingness as their term; I mean that these passions are rather cessations of movement than real movements; one then ceases to will rather than one wills.