The Road to Inner Freedom by Baruch Spinoza

Author:Baruch Spinoza
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497675780
Publisher: Philosophical Library/Open Road

Pride and Dejection

It would be too long a task to enumerate here all the evil results of pride, inasmuch as the proud are a prey to all the emotions, though to none of them less than to love and pity. I cannot, however, pass over in silence the fact that a man may be called proud from his underestimation of other people; and, therefore, pride in this sense may be defined as pleasure arising from the false opinion whereby a man may consider himself superior to his fellows.

The dejection, which is the opposite quality to this sort of pride, may be defined as pain arising from the false opinion whereby a man may think himself inferior to his fellows. Such being the case, we can easily see that a proud man is necessarily envious and only takes pleasure in the company who fool his weak mind to the top of his bent, and make him insane instead of merely foolish.

Though dejection is the emotion contrary to pride, yet is the dejected man very near akin to the proud man. For, inasmuch as his pain arises from a comparison between his own infirmity and other men’s power or virtue, it will be removed, or, in other words, he will feel pleasure, if his imagination be occupied in contemplating other men’s faults; whence arises the proverb, “The unhappy are comforted by finding fellow-sufferers.” Contrariwise, he will be more pained in proportion as he thinks himself inferior to others; hence none are so prone to envy as the dejected, they are specially keen in observing men’s actions with a view to fault-finding rather than correction, in order to reserve their praises for dejection, and to glory therein, though all the time with a dejected air. These effects follow as necessarily from the said emotion, as it follows from the nature of a triangle that the three angles are equal to two right angles

I have already said that I call these and similar emotions bad, solely in respect to what is useful to man. The laws of nature have regard to nature’s general order, whereof man is but a part. I mention this in passing lest any should think that I have wished to set forth the faults and irrational deeds of men rather than the nature and properties of things. For I regard human emotions and their properties as on the same footing with other natural phenomena. Assuredly human emotions indicate the power and ingenuity of nature, if not of human nature, quite as fully as other things which we admire, and which we delight to contemplate.

Honor is not repugnant to reason, but may arise therefrom.

Empty honor, as it is styled, is self-approval, fostered only by the good opinion of the populace; when this good opinion ceases there ceases also the self-approval, in other words, the highest object of each man’s love; consequently, he whose honor is rooted in popular approval must, day by day, anxiously strive, act, and scheme in order to retain his reputation.

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