The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed love. Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire; and having and enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is opposed to it, it is fear; and feeling what is opposed to it, when it has befallen it, it is sadness. Now these motions are evil if the love is evil; good if the love is good. What we assert let us prove from Scripture. The apostle “desires to depart, and to be with Christ.”662 And, “My soul desired to long for Thy judgments”;663 or if it is more appropriate to say, “My soul longed to desire Thy judgments.” And, “The desire of wisdom bringeth to a kingdom.”664 Yet there has always obtained the usage of understanding desire and concupiscence in a bad sense if the object be not defined. But joy is used in a good sense: “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous.”665 And, “Thou hast put gladness in my heart.”666 And, “Thou wilt fill me with joy with Thy countenance.”667 Fear is used in a good sense by the apostle when he says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”668 And, “Be not high-minded, but fear.”669 And, “I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”670 But with respect to sadness, which Cicero prefers to call sickness (aegritudo), and Virgil pain (dolor) (as he says, “Dolent gaudentque”671), but which I prefer to call sorrow, because sickness and pain are more commonly used to express bodily suffering—with respect to this emotion, I say, the question whether it can be used in a good sense is more difficult.
VIII
Of the three perturbations, which the Stoics admitted in the soul of the wise man to the exclusion of grief or sadness, which the manly mind ought not to experience.
Those emotions which the Greeks call εὐπαθείαι, and which Cicero calls constantiae, the Stoics would restrict to three; and, instead of three “perturbations” in the soul of the wise man, they substituted severally, in place of desire, will; in place of joy, contentment; and for fear, caution; and as to sickness or pain, which we, to avoid ambiguity, preferred to call sorrow, they denied that it could exist in the mind of a wise man. Will, they say, seeks the good, for this the wise man does. Contentment has its object in good that is possessed, and this the wise man continually possesses. Caution avoids evil, and this the wise man ought to avoid. But sorrow arises from evil that has already happened; and as they suppose that no evil can happen to the wise man, there can be no representative of sorrow in his mind. According to them, therefore, none but the wise man wills, is contented, uses caution; and that the fool can do no more than desire, rejoice, fear, be sad. The former three affections Cicero calls constantiae, the last four perturbationes. Many, however, call these last “passions”; and, as I have said, the Greeks call the former εὐπαθείαι, and the latter πάθη. And when I made a careful examination of Scripture to find whether this terminology was sanctioned by it, I came upon this saying of the prophet: “There is no contentment to the wicked, saith the Lord”;672 as if the wicked might more properly rejoice than be contented regarding evils, for contentment is the property of the good and godly. I found also that verse in the Gospel: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them”;673 which seems to imply that evil or shameful things may be the object of desire, but not of will. Indeed, some interpreters have added “good things” to make the expression more in conformity with customary usage, and have given this meaning, “Whatsoever good deeds that ye would that men should do unto you.” For they thought that this would prevent anyone from wishing other men to provide him with unseemly, not to say shameful, gratifications—luxurious banquets, for example—on the supposition that if he returned the like to them he would be fulfilling this precept. In the Greek Gospel, however, from which the Latin is translated, “good” does not occur, but only, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them,” and, as I believe, because “good” is already included in the word “would”; for He does not say “desire.”
Yet though we may sometimes avail ourselves of these precise proprieties of language, we are not to be always bridled by them; and when we read those writers against whose authority it
