(E4:4) I, therefore, recognize only three primitive or primary emotions
(as I said in I:[xi] Note), namely, pleasure, pain, and desire. (5) I have
spoken of wonder, simply because it is customary to speak of certain
emotions springing from the three primitive ones by, different names,
when they are referred to the objects of our wonder. (6) I am led by,
the same motive to add a definition of contempt.
[De.V] Contempt is the conception (imaginatio) of anything which
touches the mind so little, that its presence leads the mind
to imagine those qualities which are not in it rather than
such as are in it (cf. [lii] note).
(65:1) The definitions of veneration and scorn [contempt] I here pass
over, for I am not aware that any emotions are named after them.
[De.VI] Love is pleasure, accompanied by the idea
of an external cause.
Explanation.- (E6:1) This definition explains sufficiently clearly the
essence of love; the definition given by those authors who say that love
is the lover's wish to unite himself to the loved object expresses a
property, but not the essence of love; and, as such authors have not
sufficiently discerned love's essence, they have been unable to acquire
a true conception of its properties, accordingly, their definition is on
all hands admitted to be very obscure. (E6:2) It must, however, be noted,
that when I say, that it is a property of love, that the lover should
wish to unite himself to the beloved object, I do not here mean by wish
consent, or conclusion, or a free decision of the mind (for I have shown
such, in II:[xlviii] , to be fictitious); neither do I mean a desire of
being united to the loved object when it is absent, or of continuing in
its presence when it is at hand; for love can be conceived without either
of these desires; but by wish I mean the contentment, which is in the
lover, on account of the presence of the beloved object, whereby the
pleasure of the lover is strengthened, or at least maintained.
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