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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, Theotimus, what is good but that
which every one wills. And what is the will, if not
the faculty which bears us towards and makes us tend
to good or what the will believes to be such?
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 and the other may truly be named love, but in a
different sense: for as the dawning of day may be
termed day, so this first complacency of the heart in
the thing beloved may be called love because it is
the first feeling of love.
But as the true heart of the day is measured from
the end of dawn till sunset, so the true essence of
love consists in the movement and effusion of the
heart which immediately follows complacency and ends
in union.
In short, complacency is the first stirring or
emotion which good causes in the will, and this
emotion is followed by the movement and effusion by
which the soul runs towards and reaches the thing
beloved, which is the true and proper love. We may
express it thus: the good takes, grasps and ties the
heart by complacency, but by love it draws, conducts
and conveys it to itself, by complacency it makes it
start on its way, but by love it makes it achieve the
journey.
Complacency is the awakener of the heart, but love
is its action; complacency makes it get up, but love
makes it walk. The heart spreads its wings by
complacency but love is its flight. Love then, to
speak distinctly and precisely, is no other thing
than the movement, effusion and advancement of the
heart towards good.
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 makes it stop
and rest as soon as it has reached its place.
So it is with the complacency which excites the
will: this moves it, and this makes it repose in the
thing beloved when it has united itself therewith.
This motion of love then having its birth,
preservation, and perfection dependent on
complacency, and being always inseparably joined
thereto, it is no marvel that these great minds
considered love and complacency to be the same,
though in truth love being a true passion of the soul
cannot be a simple complacency, but must needs be the
motion proceeding from it.
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 commencement of willing, not
followed out, because the will, by reason of
impossibility or extreme difficulty, stops her
motion, and ends it in this simple affection of a
wish. It is as though she said: this good which I
behold and cannot expect to get is truly very
agreeable to me, and though I cannot will it nor hope
for it, yet so my affection stands, that if I could
will or desire it, I would desire and will it gladly.
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.
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