holds his predecessor's false
concept of freedom responsible for the failure of his very acute inquiry.
All previous writers on the passions have either derided, or bewailed, or
condemned them, instead of investigating their nature. Spinoza will
neither denounce nor ridicule human actions and appetites, but endeavor
to comprehend them on the basis of natural laws, and to consider them as
though the question concerned lines, surfaces, and bodies. He aims not
to look on hate, anger, and the rest as flaws, but as necessary, though
troublesome, properties of human nature, for which, as really as for heat
and cold, thunder and lightning, a causal explanation is requisite.--As a
determinate, finite being the mind is dependent in its existence and its
activity on other finite things, and is incomprehensible without them;
from its involution in the general course of nature the inadequate ideas
inevitably follow, and from these the passive states or emotions; the
passions thus belong to human nature, as one subject to limitation and
negation.--The destruction of contingent and perishable things is effected
by external causes; no one is destroyed by itself; so far as in it lies
everything strives to persist in its being (III. _prop_. 4 and 6). The
fundamental endeavor after self-preservation constitutes the essence of
each thing (III. _prop_. 7). This endeavor _(conatus)_ is termed will
_(voluntas)_ or desire _(cupiditas)_ when it is referred to the mind alone,
and appetite _(appetitus)_ when referred to the mind and body together;
desire or volition is conscious appetite (III. _prop_. 9, _schol_.). We
call a thing good because we desire it, not desire a thing because we hold
it good (cf. Hobbes, p. 75). To desire two further fundamental forms of the
emotions are added, pleasure and pain. If a thing increases the power of
our body to act, the idea of it increases the power of our soul to think,
and is gladly imagined by it. Pleasure (_laetitia_) is the transition of
a man to a greater, and pain (_tristitia_) his transition to a lesser
perfection.

All other emotions are modifications or combinations of the three original
ones, to which Spinoza reduces the six of Descartes (cf. p. 105). In
the deduction and description of them his procedure is sometimes aridly
systematic, sometimes even forced and artificial, but for the most part
ingenious, appropriate, and psychologically acute. Whatever gives us
pleasure augments our being, and