t merely from
sympathy or antipathy. If we hate a thing, we seek to affirm concerning
it everything that we think can affect it with sorrow, while we deny
everything that we think can affect it with joy. From this we see how
easily a man may think too much of himself, and of the object which he
loves, and on the other hand, may think too little of what he hates.

When a man thinks too much of himself this imagination is termed pride,
and is a species of delirium, because he dreams with his eyes open, that
he can do all those things to which he attains in imagination alone,
regarding them thus as realities, and rejoicing in them so long as he
cannot imagine anything to exclude their existence and limit his power
of action.

If we imagine that a person loves, desires, or hates a thing which we
love, desire, or hate, we shall on that account love, desire, or hate
the thing more intensely. If, on the other hand, we imagine that he is
averse to the thing we love, or loves the thing to which we are averse,
then we shall suffer vacillation of mind. Hence every one strives to the
utmost to induce others to love what he loves and to hate what he hates.
This effort is called ambition, which prompts each person to desire that
others should live according to his way of thinking. But if all thus
act, then all hinder each other. And if all wish to be praised or loved
by all, then all hate one another.

Joy is a man's passage from a less to a greater perfection; sorrow is a
man's passage from a greater to a less perfection. I say passage, for
joy is not perfection itself. If a man were born with the perfection to
which he passes, he would possess it without the affection of joy--a
truth the more vividly apparent from the affection of sorrow which is
the contrary of joy.

For, that sorrow consists in the passage to a less perfection, but not
in the less perfection itself, no one can deny, since in so far as a
man partakes of any perfection, he cannot be sad.

Nor can we say that sorrow consists in the passage to a less perfection,
for privation is nothing. But the affection of sorrow is actual, and so
can be nothing else than the passage to a lesser perfection, that is,
the reality by which the power of acting is limited or diminished. As
for the definitions of cheerfulness, pleasurable excitement, melancholy,
or grief, I omit these, because they are related rather to the body than
to the mind, and are merely different species of