THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

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THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
but transitions. "Pleasure is man's transition from a lesser state of perfection"
(i. e. 3 completeness, or fulfillment) "to a greater." "Joy consists
in this, that one's power is increased." 74 "Pain is man's transition from a
greater state of perfection to a lesser. I say transition; for pleasure is
not itself: if
perfection
a man were born with the perfection to which he
passes he would be without ... the emotion of pleasure. And the contrary
of this makes it still more apparent." 75 All passions are passages, all
emotions are motions, towards or from completeness and power.
"By emotion (affectus) I understand the modifications of the body by
which the power of action in the body is increased or diminished, aided
or lestrained, and at the same time the ideas of these modifications." 76
(This theory of emotion is usually credited to James and Lange; it is here
formulated more precisely than by either of these psychologists, and accords
remarkably with t/ie findings of Professor Gannon.) A passion or
an emotion is bad or good not in itself, but only as it decreases or en-
77
hances our power. "By virtue and power I mean the same thing"; a
78
virtue is a power of acting, a form of ability; "the more a man can preserve
his being and seek what is useful to him, the 70
is greater his virtue."
Spinoza does not ask a man to sacrifice himself to another's good; he is
more lenient than nature. He thinks that is egoism a necessary corollary
of the supreme instinct of self-preservation; "no one ever neglects anything
which he judges to be good, exrept with the hope of gaining a
greater good." 80 This seems to Spinoza perfectly reasonable. "Since
reason demands nothing against nature, it concedes that each man must
love himself, and seek what is useful to him, and desire whatever leads
him truly to a greater state of perfection; and that each man should
endeavor to preserve his being so far as in him lies." 81 So he builds his
ethic not on altruism and the natural goodness of man, like Utopian re-
formers ; nor on selfishness and the natural wickedness of man, like cynical
conservatives, but on what he considers to be an inevitable and justifiable
egoism. A system of morals that teaches a man to be weak is worthless;
"the foundation of virtue is no other than the effort to maintain one's
being; and man's happiness consists in the power of so doing." 82
Like Nietzsche, Spinoza has not much use for humility; 83 it is either
the hypocrisy of a schemer or the timidity of a slave; it implies the absence
of power whereas to Spinoza all virtues are forms of ability and
power. So is remorse a defect rather than a virtue: "he who repents is
twice unhappy and doubly weak." 84 But he does not spend so much time
as Nietzsche in inveighing against humility; for "humility is very rare"; 85
w Cf. Nietzsche: "What is happiness? The feeling that power increases thai
resistance is overcome." Antichrist, sect. 2.
"Ill, App. "Ill, def. 3. "IV, def. 8. "Ill, 55, cor. *.
a
IV, 18 note. "Ibid.
TO
IV, ao. *T. T-P., ch. 16.
"Ill, 55, "IV, 54, *III, App.a def. 29.