THE will has so great a sympathy with good that as soon as
she perceives it she turns towards it to delight therein as in her
most agreeable object, to which she is so closely allied that her
nature cannot be explained except by the relation she has
thereto, just as one cannot show the nature of what is good
except by the affinity it has with the will. For, tell me,
The will then perceiving and feeling the good, by the help of the understanding which proposes it, feels at the same time a sudden delight and complacency at this meeting, which sweetly yet powerfully moves her towards this pleasing object in order to unite herself with it, and makes her search out the means most proper to attain this union.
The will then has a most close affinity with good; this affinity produces the complacency which the will takes in feeling and perceiving good; this complacency moves and spurs the will forward to good; this movement tends to union; and in fine the will moved and tending to union searches out all the means necessary to get it.
And in truth, speaking generally, love comprises all this together, as a beautiful tree, whose root is the correspondence which the will has to good, its foot is the complacency, its trunk is the movement, its seekings, its pursuits, and other efforts are the branches, but union and enjoyment are its fruits. Thus love seems to be composed of these five principal parts under which a number of other little pieces are contained as we shall see in the course of this work.
Let us consider, I pray you, the exercise of an insensible love between the loadstone and iron; for it is the true image of the sensible and voluntary love of which we speak. Iron, then, has such a sympathy with the loadstone that as soon as it feels the power thereof, it turns towards it; then it suddenly begins to stir and quiver with little throbbings, testifying by this the complacency it feels, and then it advances and moves towards the loadstone striving by all means possible to be united to it. Do you not see all the parts of love well represented in these lifeless things?
But to conclude, Theotimus, the complacency and the movement towards, or effusion of the will upon, the thing beloved is
properly speaking love; yet in such sort that the complacency
is but the beginning of love, and the movement or effusion of
the heart which ensues is the true essential love, so that the one
Many great persons have been of opinion that love is no other
thing than complacency itself, in which they have had much
appearance of reason. For not only does the movement of love
take its origin from the complacency which the heart feels at
the first approach of good, and find its end in a second complacency which returns to the heart by union with the thing
beloved, - but further, it depends for its preservation on this
complacency, and can only subsist through it as through its
mother and nurse; so that as soon as the complacency ceases
love ceases. And as the bee being born in honey, feeds
on honey, and only flies for honey, so love is born of complacency, maintained by complacency, and tends to complacency. It is the weight of things which stirs them, moves
them, and stays them; it is the weight of the stone that
stirs it and moves it to its descent as soon as the obstacles are
removed; it is the same weight that makes it continue its
movement downwards; and finally it is the same weight that
Now this motion caused by complacency lasts till the union or fruition. Therefore when it tends to a present good, it does no more than push the heart, clasp it, join, and apply it to the thing beloved, which by this means it enjoys, and then it is called love of complacency, because as soon as ever it is begotten of the first complacency it ends in the second, which it receives in being united to its present object. But when the good towards which the heart is turned, inclined, and moved is distant, absent or future, or when so perfect a union cannot yet be made as is desired, then the motion of love by which the heart tends, makes and aspires towards this absent object, is properly named desire, for desire is no other thing than the appetite, concupiscence, or cupidity for things we have not, but which however we aim at getting.
There are yet certain other motions of love by which we
desire things that we neither expect nor aim at in any way, as
when we say: Why am I not now in heaven! I wish I were
a king; I would to God I were younger; how I wish I had
never sinned, and the like. These indeed are desires, but imperfect ones, which, to speak properly, I think, might be called
wishings (souhaits). And indeed these affections are not expressed like desires, for when we express our true desires we
say: I desire (Je desire): but when we signify our imperfect
desires we say: I should or I would desire (je desirerois), or I
should like. We may well say: I would desire to be young;
but we do not say: I desire to be young; seeing that this
is not possible; and this motion is called a wishing, or as
the Scholastics term it a velleity, which is nothing else but a
In brief, these wishings or velleities are nothing else but a little love, which may be called love of simple approbation, because the soul approves the good she knows, and being unable to effectually desire she protests she would willingly desire it, and that it is truly to be desired.
Nor is this all, Theotimus, for there are desires and velleities which are yet more imperfect than those we have spoken of, forasmuch as their motions are not stayed by reason of impossibility or extreme difficulty, but by their incompatibility with other more powerful desires or willings; as when a sick man desires to eat mushrooms or melons; though he may have them at his order, yet he will not eat them, fearing thereby to make himself worse; for who sees not that there are two desires in this man, the one to eat mushrooms, the other to be cured? But because the desire of being cured is the stronger, it blocks up and suffocates the other and hinders it from producing any effect. Jephte wished to preserve his daughter, but this not being compatible with his desire to keep his vow, he willed what he did not wish, namely, to sacrifice his daughter, and wished what he did not will, namely, to preserve his daughter. Pilate and Herod wished, the one to deliver our Saviour, the other his precursor: but because these wishes were incompatible with the desires, the one to please the Jews and Caesar, the other, Herodias and her daughter, these wishes were vain and fruitless. Now in proportion as those things which are incompatible with our wishes are less desirable, the wishes are more imperfect, since they are stopped and, as it were, stifled by contraries so weak. Thus the wish which Herod had not to behead S. John was more imperfect than that of Pilate to free our Saviour. For the latter feared the calumny and indignation of the people and of Caesar; the other feared to disappoint one woman alone.
And these wishes which are hindered, not by impossibility, but by incompatibility with stronger desires, are called indeed wishes and desires, but vain, stifled and unprofitable ones. As to wishes of things impossible, we say: I wish, but cannot; and of the wishes of possible things we say: I wish, but will not.