me, I shall call him
daring. Again, a man will appear timid to me, if he fears an
evil which I am accustomed to despise; and if I further take
into consideration that his desire is restrained by the fear of
an evil, which is not sufficient to restrain me, I shall say that
he is cowardly; and in like manner will everyone pass judgment.

[10] This is possible, though the human mind is part of the divine
intellect, as I have shown in II. xiii. note.

Lastly, from this inconstancy in the nature of human
judgment, inasmuch as a man often judges things solely by his
emotions, and inasmuch as the things which he believes cause
pleasure or pain, and therefore endeavours to promote or prevent,
are often purely imaginary, not to speak of the uncertainty of
things alluded to in III. xxviii.; we may readily conceive that
a man may be at one time affected with pleasure, and at another
with pain, accompanied by the idea of himself as cause. Thus we
can easily understand what are Repentance and Self--complacency.
Repentance is pain, accompanied by the idea of one's self as
cause; Self--complacency is pleasure, accompanied by the idea of
one's self as cause, and these emotions are most intense because
men believe themselves to be free (III. xlix.).

PROP. LII. An object which we have formerly seen in conjunction
with others, and which we do not conceive to have any property
that is not common to many, will not be regarded by us for so
long, as an object which we conceive to have some property
peculiar to itself.

Proof.--As soon as we conceive an object which we have seen in
conjunction with others, we at once remember those others (II.
xviii. and note), and thus we pass forthwith from the
contemplation of one object to the contemplation of another
object. And this is the case with the object, which we conceive
to have no property that is not common to many. For we thereupon
assume that we are regarding therein nothing, which we have not
before seen in conjunction with other objects. But when we
suppose that we conceive an object something special, which we
have never seen before, we must needs say that the mind, while
regarding that object, has in itself nothing which it can fall to
regarding instead thereof; therefore it is determined to the
contemplation of that object only. Therefore an object, &c.
Q.E.D.

Note.--This mental modification, or imagination of a
particular thing, in so far as it is alone in the mind,