whatever pains us diminishes it; hence we
seek to preserve the causes of pleasurable emotions, and love them, to do
away with the causes of painful ones, and hate them. "Love is pleasure
accompanied by the idea of an external cause; hate is pain accompanied by
the idea of an external cause." Since all that furthers or diminishes the
being of (the cause of our pleasure) the object of our love, exercises
at the same time a like influence on us, we love that which rejoices the
object of our love and hate that which disturbs it; its happiness and
suffering become ours also. The converse is true of the object of our hate:
its good fortune provokes us and its ill fortune pleases us. If we are
filled with no emotion toward things like ourselves, we sympathize in their
sad or joyous feelings by involuntary imitation. Pity, from which we
strive to free ourselves as from every painful affection, inclines us to
benevolence or to assistance in the removal of the cause of the misery of
others. Envy of those who are fortunate, and commiseration of those who are
in trouble, are alike rooted in emulation. Man is by nature inclined
to envy and malevolence. Hate easily leads to underestimation, love to
overestimation, of the object, and self-love to pride or self-satisfaction,
which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility. Immoderate
desire for honor is termed ambition; if the desire to please others is kept
within due bounds it is praised as unpretentiousness, courtesy, modesty
(_modestia_). Ambition, luxury, drunkenness, avarice, and lust have no
contraries, for temperance, sobriety, and chastity are not emotions
(passive states), but denote the power of the soul by which the former
are moderated, and which is discussed later under the name _fortitudo_.
Self-abasement or humility is a feeling of pain arising from the
consideration of our weakness and impotency; its opposite is
self-complacency. Either of these may be accompanied by the (erroneous)
belief that we have done the saddening or gladdening act of our own free
will; in this case the former affection is termed repentance. Hope and fear
are inconstant pleasure and pain, arising from the idea of something past
or to come, concerning whose coming and whose issue we are still in doubt.
There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear without hope; for he who
still doubts imagines something which excludes the existence of that which
is expected. If the cause of doubt