ind alone the remedies against the emotions--remedies
which every one, I believe, has experienced, although there may not have
been any accurate observation or distinct perception of them, and from
this knowledge of the mind alone shall we deduce everything which
relates to its blessedness.

_Axioms_

I. If two contrary actions be excited in the same subject, a change must
necessarily take place in both, or in one alone, until they cease to be
contrary.

II. The power of an emotion is limited by the power of its cause, in so
far as the essence of the emotion is manifested or limited by the
essence of the cause itself.

_The Strength of the Emotions_

The emotion towards an object which we imagine to be free is greater
than towards one which is necessary, and consequently still greater
than towards one which we imagine as possible or contingent. But to
imagine an object as free can be nothing else than to imagine it simply,
while we know not the causes by which it was determined to action. An
emotion, therefore, towards an object which we simply imagine is, other
things being equal, greater than towards one which we imagine as
necessary, possible, or contingent, and consequently greatest of all.

The mind understands all things to be necessary and determined by an
infinite chain of causes to existence and action, and therefore so far
enables itself to suffer less from the emotions which arise from these
things, and to be less affected towards them.

The more this knowledge that things are necessary is applied to
individual things which we imagine more distinctly and more vividly, the
greater is this power of the mind over the emotions--a fact to which
experience also testifies. For we see that sorrow for the loss of
anything good is diminished if the person who has lost it considers that
it could not by any possibility have been preserved. So also we see that
nobody pities an infant because it does not know how to speak, walk, or
reason, and lives so many years not conscious, as it were, of itself.
But if a number of human beings were born adult, and only a few here and
there were born infants, every one would pity the infants, because we
should then consider infancy not as a thing natural and necessary, but
as a defect or fault of Nature. Many other facts of a similar kind we
might observe.

We do not contemplate an object as absent by reason of the emotion by
which we imagine it, but by reason of the fact