contrary, strives to
drive out hatred by love, fights joyfully and confidently, with equal
ease resisting one man or a number of men, and needing scarcely any
assistance from fortune. Those whom he conquers yield gladly, not from
defect of strength, but from an increase of it. These truths, however,
all follow so plainly from the definitions alone of love and the
intellect, that there is no need to demonstrate them singly.

V

_Necessary Evils_

(i)

The emotions of hope and fear cannot exist without sorrow; for fear is
sorrow, and hope cannot exist without fear. Therefore these emotions
cannot be good of themselves, but only in so far as they are able to
restrain the excesses of joy.

We may here add that these emotions indicate want of knowledge and
impotence of mind, and, for the same reason, confidence, despair,
gladness, and remorse are signs of weakness of mind. For although
confidence and gladness are emotions of joy, they nevertheless suppose
that sorrow has preceded them, namely, hope or fear. In proportion,
therefore, as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason,
shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate
ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and to direct our actions by the
sure counsels of reason.

Humility is sorrow, which springs from this, that a man contemplates his
own weakness. But in so far as a man knows himself by true reason is he
supposed to understand his essence, that is to say, his power. If,
therefore, while contemplating himself, he perceives any impotence of
his, this is not due to his understanding himself, but, as we have
shown, to the fact that his power of actions is restrained. But if we
suppose that he forms a conception of his own impotence because he
understands something to be more powerful than himself, by the knowledge
of which he limits his own power of action, in this case we simply
conceive that he understands himself distinctly, and his power of action
is increased. Humility or sorrow, therefore, which arises because a man
contemplates his own impotence, does not spring from true contemplation
or reason, and is not a virtue, but a passion.

Repentance is not a virtue, that is to say, it does not spring from
reason; on the contrary, the man who repents of what he has done is
doubly wretched or impotent. For, in the first place, we allow ourselves
to be overcome by a depraved desire, and, in the second place, by
sorrow.

I