.

IV

_Summary_

I have, in what has preceded, included all the remedies for the
emotions, that is to say, everything which the mind, considered in
itself alone, can do against them. It appears therefrom that the power
of the mind over the emotions consists--

1. In the knowledge itself of the emotions.

2. In the separation by the mind of the emotions from the thought of an
external cause, which we imagine confusedly.

3. In duration, in which the emotions which are related to objects we
understand surpass those related to objects conceived in a mutilated or
confused manner.

4. In the multitude of causes by which the emotions which are related to
the common properties of things or to God are nourished.

5. In the order in which the mind can arrange its emotions and connect
them one with the other.

But that this power of the mind over the emotions may be better
understood, it is to be carefully observed that we call the emotions
great when we compare the emotion of one man with that of another, and
see that one man is agitated more than another by the same emotion, or
when we compare the emotions of one and the same man with one another,
and discover that he is affected or moved more by one emotion than by
another.

For the power of any emotion is limited by the power of the external
cause as compared with our own power. But the power of the mind is
limited solely by knowledge, whilst impotence or passion is estimated
solely by privation of knowledge, or, in other words, by that through
which ideas are called inadequate; and it therefore follows that that
mind suffers the most whose largest part consists of inadequate ideas,
so that it is distinguished rather by what it suffers than by what it
does, while, on the contrary, that mind acts the most whose largest part
consists of adequate ideas, so that although it may possess as many
inadequate ideas as the first, it is nevertheless distinguished rather
by those which belong to human virtue than by those which are a sign of
human impotence. Again, it is to be observed that our sorrows and
misfortunes mainly proceed from too much love towards an object which is
subject to many changes, and which we can never possess. For no one is
troubled or anxious about any object he does not love, neither do
wrongs, suspicions, hatreds, etc., arise except from love towards
objects of which no one can be truly the possessor.

From all this we easily conceive what is