be vicious, and has no good and praiseworthy use, I have, nevertheless, much difficulty in divining what these two can serve. It seems to me that cowardice only has some use when it causes an exemption from certain sufferings, which one might be incited to undergo by plausible reasons if other surer reasons which have caused them to be reckoned worthless, had not excited that passion: for, besides exempting the spirit from those sufferings, it then serves for the body also, in which, retarding the movement of the spirits, it prevents the forces from being dissipated. But ordinarily it is very injurious, because it turns aside the will from useful actions; and since it only arises from one not having enough hope or desire, one should increase in himself those two passions to correct it. As to fear or terror, I do not see that it can ever be praiseworthy or useful; besides, it is not an individual passion, it is only an excess of cowardice, of stupefaction and dread, which is always vicious, just as boldness is an excess of courage which is always good, provided the end proposed is good; and since the principal cause of fear is surprise, there is nothing better to procure exemption from it than to use premeditations and prepare for all eventualities, the dread of which causes it. Remorse. Remorse of conscience is a species of sadness which springs from a doubt whether something one is doing or has done is not wrong; and it necessarily presupposes doubt; for if one were entirely assured that what he was doing was bad, inasmuch as the will does not apply itself except to things which have some appearance of goodness; and if one were assured that what he had already done was bad, he ought to repent of it, not merely feel remorse. Now, the use of that passion is to make one examine if the thing one doubts of is good or not, or prevent him from doing one at another time until he is assured it is good. But, because it presupposes evil, it would be best never to be subject to the feelings; and one can prevent it by the same means by which he can free himself from irresolution. Mockery. Derision or mockery is a species of joy mingled with aversion, which springs from perceiving some slight misfortune befall a person whom one thinks deserves it; and when it occurs unexpectedly, the surprise of the wonderment is the cause of one's bursting into laughter, according to what has been said above of the nature of laughter. But the misfortune must be slight; for if it is great one cannot believe that he who has it deserves it, unless one had a very bad nature, or feels a great deal of aversion. And we see that those who have very obvious deformities for instance, those who are lame, one-eyed, or humpbacked, or have received some affront in public -are particularly inclined to mockery; for, desiring to see all others as much disgraced as themselves, they are well pleased with the evils that come to those others, and think they deserve them. The Use of Raillery. -With regard to modest raillery, which rebukes the vices by making them seem ridiculous, without however laughing at them one's self, nor evincing any hate against persons, it is not a passion, but the trait of an honest man, which makes visible the gayety of his humor and the tranquillity of his spirit, which are the marks of virtue, and often also the skill of his wit, by which to know how to give an agreeable appearance to the things he scoffs at. And it is not indecent to laugh when one hears another's railleries; they may even be such that it would be surly not to laugh at them; but when one rallies another himself, it is more seemly to abstain from it, to the end of not seeming surprised by the things he says himself, not admiring the skill with which he has invented them and that causes them to surprise so much more those who hear them. Envy. What is commonly termed envy is a vice that consists in a perversity of nature, which makes certain people torment themselves with the good fortune they see coming to other men; but I use the word here to signify a passion which is not always vicious. Envy, then, so far as it is a passion, is a species of sadness mixed with aversion which springs from seeing good things come to those we think worthy of them-those which we justly think are only gifts of fortune; for as to those of soul or of body, so far as one has them from birth, it is enough to constitute desert of them that one has received them from God before being capable of committing any evil. But when fortune sends some one good things he is really unworthy of, and envy is excited in us only because, naturally loving justice, we are pained that it is not observed in the distribution of the benefits, it is a zeal which cannot but be excusable, principally when the good which we envy others is of such a nature that it may be converted into evil in their hands, as when it is some charge or office in the exercise of which they can behave ill; even when one desires for himself the same good, and is hindered from having it because others who are less worthy possess it, VOL. XIV. 13 this renders that passion more violent, but it does not cease to be excusable, provided the aversion it contains relates solely to the bad distribution of the good one envies, and not at all to the persons who possess or distribute it. But there are few so just and so generous as to have no hate whatever to those who block the way to their acquisition of a good which is not communicable to many, and which they have desired for themselves, even if those who have acquired it are as worthy or more so. And what is ordinarily most envied is glory; for even if that of others does not hinder us from aspiring to it, it nevertheless renders access more difficult and raises the price. Furthermore, there is no vice which injures the happiness of men so much as envy; for besides that those infected afflict themselves, they also trouble to the extent of their power the pleasure of others; and they generally have a leaden color,that is to say, a mixture of yellow and black, as if of dead blood, whence it comes that the envious is named livor in Latin; which accords very well with what has been said above of the movements of the blood in sadness and in aversion; for this causes the yellow bile which comes from the lower part of the liver, and the black which comes from the spleen, to spread themselves from the heart through the arteries into all the veins, and that causes the venous blood to have less heat and flow more slowly than ordinary, which suffices to render the color livid. But because the bile, as well yellow as black, can also be carried into the veins by many other causes, and that envy does not force them there in large enough quantity to change the color of the complexion, unless it is very great and of long duration, we ought not to think that all those in whom we see that color are thus inclined. Pity. Pity is a species of sadness, mingled with love or good will toward those we see suffering some evil of which we think them unworthy. Thus it is the opposite of envy, by reason of its object; and of mockery, because he regards them in another manner. Those who feel themselves very weak and very subject to adversities of fortune, seem to be more inclined to this passion than others, because they fancy the evils of others may come to themselves; and thus they are moved to pity rather by the love they bear themselves than by that which they bear to others. But nevertheless those who are most generous, and who have the strongest spirit, so that they fear no evil for them selves, and hold themselves beyond the power of fortune, are not exempt from compassion when they see the infirmity of other men, and hear their complaints; for it is a part of generosity to have good will to every one. But the sadness of that pity is not very bitter, and like that caused by the mournful acts they see represented in the theater, it is more in the exterior and the senses than in the interior of the soul, which nevertheless has the satisfaction of thinking that it is doing its duty, in that it sympathizes with the afflicted. And there is this difference: that whereas the ordinary man has compassion for those who complain, because he thinks the evils they suffer are very grievous, the principal object of pity with great men is the weakness of those whom they see complain, because they think no casualty which can befall is so great an evil as the cowardice of those who cannot suffer with constancy; and though they hate vices, they do not hate on that account those they see subject to such, they have only pity for them. But there are none but malicious and envious minds who naturally hate all men; or rather it is those who are so brutal, and so blinded by good fortune, or desperate from bad, that they think nothing evil can come to themselves, who are insensible to pity. Furthermore, one weeps very easily in this passion, because love, carrying much blood to the heart, causes many vapors to depart through the eyes. POEMS OF RICHARD LOVELACE. [RICHARD LOVELACE was born in Kent, 1618, of distinguished legal and military families; graduated at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, and took military service in Charles' inglorious Scotch war, besides essaying drama in the style of Fletcher, and poetry in that of Donne. In the civil broils that followed, he presented a petition to the Long Parliament in favor of the King, and was made prisoner on parole, with £40,000 bail, which kept him from English soldiering through the war, though he helped the French King besiege Dunkirk in 1646. Returning to England in 1648, he was again imprisoned, released after Charles' execution, but died in hopeless poverty in 1658. He had published a volume of poems, "Lucasta," in 1649.] To ALTHEA, FROM PRISON. WHEN love with unconfinèd wings And my divine Althea brings When flowing cups run swiftly round When healths and draughts go free, Know no such liberty. When, like committed linnets, I When I shall voice aloud, how good Stone walls do not a prison make, TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO The Wars. Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field, 1 Lucy Sacheverell, who married another on a false report of his death at Dunkirk. |