will regard the beloved with greater
pain, or in other words, will hate it more than if he had never
loved it, and with the more intensity in proportion as his former
love was greater. Q.E.D.
PROP. XXXIX. He who hates anyone will endeavour to do him an
injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue
to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the
same law, seek to benefit him.
Proof.--To hate a man is (III. xiii. note) to conceive him as
a cause of pain; therefore he who hates a man will endeavour to
remove or destroy him. But if anything more painful, or, in
other words, a greater evil, should accrue to the hater
thereby--and if the hater thinks he can avoid such evil by not
carrying out the injury, which he planned against the object of
his hate--he will desire to abstain from inflicting that injury
(III. xxviii.), and the strength of his endeavour (III. xxxvii.)
will be greater than his former endeavour to do injury, and will
therefore prevail over it, as we asserted. The second part of
this proof proceeds in the same manner. Wherefore he who hates
another, etc. Q.E.D.
Note.--By good I here mean every kind of pleasure, and all
that conduces thereto, especially that which satisfies our
longings, whatsoever they may be. By evil, I mean every kind of
pain, especially that which frustrates our longings. For I have
shown (III. ix. note) that we in no case desire a thing because
we deem it good, but, contrariwise, we deem a thing good because
we desire it: consequently we deem evil that which we shrink
from; everyone, therefore, according to his particular emotions,
judges or estimates what is good, what is bad, what is better,
what is worse, lastly, what is best, and what is worst. Thus a
miser thinks that abundance of money is the best, and want of
money the worst; an ambitious man desires nothing so much as
glory, and fears nothing so much as shame. To an envious man
nothing is more delightful than another's misfortune, and nothing
more painful than another's success. So every man, according to
his emotions, judges a thing to be good or bad, useful or
useless. The emotion, which induces a man to turn from that
which he wishes, or to wish for that which he turns from, is
called timidity, which may accordingly be defined as the fear
whereby a man is induced to avoid an evil which he regards as
future by encountering a lesser evil (III. xxviii.). But if the
evil whi
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