Chapter 16: Of the Affection of Desire — Its Kinds, Objects, and Causes

The next passions in order of nature to these two are desire and abomination, which because they differ not much otherwise from love and hatred, than the act from the habit, or than a man sitting from himself walking, desire being but the motion and exercise, as delight is the quiet and repose of our love, I shall therefore the more briefly pass it over. Desire is the wing of the soul whereby it moves, and is carried to the thing which it loves, as the eagle to the [reconstructed: carcass] in the Scripture proves, to feed itself upon it, and to be satisfied with it. For as the appetite of the eagle is attended with sharpness of sight to discover its prey, with swiftness of wing to hasten to it, and with strength to seize upon it: so according to the proportion of the Soul's love to its object does it command and call together both the wisdom and powers of the whole man to direct to, and to promote the procuring of it. And the very best characters and truest lineaments which can be drawn of the minds of men, are to be taken from their desires, rather than from their practices. As physicians often judge of the diseases of sick men by their appetites. Ill men dare not do so much evil as they desire, for fear of shame or punishment. Good men cannot do so much good as they desire for want of power and provisions of virtue. Besides, practices may be over-ruled by ends, but desires are always genuine and natural, for no man can be constrained to will that which he does not love; and therefore in the Scripture good men have had most confidence in approving themselves to God by their affections and the inward longings of their souls after him as being the purest and most unfeigned issues of love, and such as have least proximity and danger of infection from foreign and secular ends. Saint Paul himself was much better at willing than at performing; and Saint Peter who failed in his promise of [reconstructed: dying], dares appeal to Christ's own omniscience for the truth of his loving. Whatever other defects may attend our actions, this is an inseparable character of a pious soul, that it desires to fear God's name, and according to the prevalence of that affection, has its conversation in heaven too. In which regard Christ is called the Desire of all Nations, both because where he is he draws all the hearts and desires of his people to him, and also does by his grace most fully answer and satisfy all the desires that are presented before him: as it is said of one of the Roman emperors, Neminem unquam dimisit Tristem, he never sends any discontented out of his presence.

The desires of the soul are of three sorts, according to the three degrees of perfection which belong to man: natural, rational, spiritual.

Natural desires respect [in non-Latin alphabet] things of simple necessity to the being, preservation, and integrity of nature, as the desires which things have to their proper nourishment and place ad conservationem individui, for preserving themselves and to propagation and increase ad conservationem speciei, for preserving of their kind.

Rational desires are such as respect [in non-Latin alphabet] such things as are eligible in themselves, and the proper objects of right reason, such as felicity the common end of all rational appetitions, virtue the way, and external good things, as health, strength, credit, dignity, prosperity, the ornaments of human life.

Spiritual desires respect [in non-Latin alphabet] heavenly and spiritual things, the things of God, things which are above, the knowledge whereof we have not by philosophical, but by apostolic discovery, by the Spirit of God who alone searches the deep things of God.

The corrupt desires contrary to these are either vicious or morbid. Vicious are again of two sorts: first, intemperate and incontinent desires, which err not in the substance or nature of the thing desired; but only [in non-Latin alphabet], as the philosopher speaks, in the measure and manner of desiring them. It is lawful to drink wine, and a man may err (as Timothy did) in an over-rigorous severity to nature, when health or needful refreshment requires it: for our flesh is to be subdued to reason, not to infirmities, that it may be a servant to the soul, but not a burden. But if we let wine be [in non-Latin alphabet], as the heathen called it, to take a freedom against us, like Ham to mock us, and discover our nakedness, and make us servants to it. If we do not only eat honey, but surfeit on it; if we must have meat like Israel in the wilderness, not only for our need, but for our lust; if we eat and drink so long that we are good for nothing, but either to lie down and sleep, or to rise up and play, to live today and to die tomorrow. If we make our belly the grave of our soul, and the dungeon of our reason, and let our intestina as well morally as naturally far exceed the length of the whole man besides. This is in the Apostle's phrase to be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and it is an intemperate excess against natural desires which will ever end in pain. It was a witty speech of Anacharsis the philosopher, that the vine bears three sorts of grapes: the first of delight; the second of excess; the third of sorrow. If we let our delight steal us into excess, and become a mocker, our excess will quickly betray us to sorrow (as Delilah did Samson to the Philistines) and let us know that after wine has mocked it can rage too. Like the head of the polypus, which is sweet to the palate, but after causes troublesome sleeps and frightful dreams.

Secondly there are brutish and unnatural desires, which the philosopher calls [in non-Latin alphabet], ferine and inhuman, instancing in those barbarous countries, where they used to eat men's flesh and raw meat; and in the woman who ripped up women with child that she might eat their young ones. To which head I refer those which the Apostle calls [in non-Latin alphabet] and [in non-Latin alphabet] — vile and dishonorable affections and passions of lust wherein forsaking the guidance of nature, they dishonored their bodies among themselves, and gave themselves over, as Saint Jude speaks, to strange flesh; also incestuous and promiscuous lusts, going with naked and painted bodies, as the ancient Britons, offering of men and children in sacrifices, eating of the bodies of friends that died, burning of the living with the dead, and other like savage and barbarous practices, wherein we find how far natural corruption improved with ignorance and want of education or religion, can embrace the manners of men.

Lastly, there are morbid desires, growing out of some distemper of mind or body, called by the Philosopher [in non-Latin alphabet], as those of children, which eat coals or dirt, and the strange and depraved longings of women with child, called [in non-Latin alphabet] or Pica from the bird of that name, because the inconstant and various appetites of nature, so misguided by vicious humors, is well resembled by the strange mixture of white and black feathers in that bird.

Having considered the several kinds both of regular and corrupt desires, I shall content myself with a very brief inquiry into the causes and effects of this passion.

The causes moving it are external ex parte objecti, in the object, or internal ex parte subjecti in the mind. The object is anything apprehended sub ratione Boni et Iucundi, as good and pleasant. For upon those inducements did Satan first stir the desire of Eve toward the forbidden fruit. She saw that it was good for food, and pleasant to the eye.

Now the qualification of these to distinguish the formal reason of their being objects to our desires, from that wherein they are objects of our love, is first that they be possible: for desire being the motion and endeavor of the soul toward that good which it loves, and wherein it seeks to delight, take away the possibility of such delight, and this would be motus in vacuo, like that of Noah's dove that found no place for her feet to rest on. Hope is the whetstone and wheel of industry; if that fail, however a man may waste and pine away his thoughts in empty velleities and imaginary wishes, he can never put forth nor address his endeavors toward an impossible good. Though an old man may wish himself young again, yet no man was ever so besotted as to endeavor it. And this distinction between vanishing wishes and serious desires is of great consequence to be attended in all the motions of the soul, moral or sacred, in as much as those desires only which are active and industrious, purposely addressing themselves to the prosecution of that which they apprehend as acquirable, do commend the soul from which they issue for virtuous and pious.

Secondly, the object of the desires qua tale is apprehended as absent and distant, in as much as presence works delight rather than desire. The things we have, we enjoy; we do not covet them; we rest in them, we do not move toward them. Yet not always absent quoad totum, but quoad gradus, not in the whole, but in the parts and degrees of it: for the presence of a good thing does in some sort quicken the desires toward the same thing so far forth as it is capable of improvement and augmentation.

As we see in external riches of the body, none desire them more eagerly than those that possess them; and the more virtuous the soul of man is, the more is the heart enlarged in the appetition of a greater measure — as the putting in of some water into a pump draws forth more. No man is so importunate in praying, "Lord, help my unbelief," as he that can say "Lord, I believe." Thus even present things may be desired in order to improvement, and further degrees of them: as many times a man has a better appetite for his meat after he has begun to eat, than when he first sat down to it. Again, things present may be the object of our desires as to continuance, as he that delights in a good which he has, desires the continuance of that delight. And therefore life, even while it is possessed, is desired, because the possession of it does not cause the appetite to nauseate or surfeit upon it. Few men there are who desire not old age, not as it is old age, and imports decay, decrepitness, and defects of nature: for a young man does not desire to be old now; but as it implies the longer and fuller possession of life. For a man being conscious to himself, first of his own insufficiency to make himself happy, from and within himself; and next of the immortality of his nature: as upon the former reason, he is busied in sending abroad his desires (as the purveyors and caterers of the soul) to bring in such things as may promote perfection: so those very desires having succeeded, do further endeavor the satisfaction of nature, by moving toward the perpetuity of what they have procured. It was a sordid and brutish wish of Philoenus in the Philosopher, who wished that he had the throat of a crane or vulture that the pleasure of his taste might last the longer (it being the wisdom of nature, intending the chief perfections of man to his soul, to make his bodily pleasures the shorter). But surely the soul of man having a reach as far as immortality, may justly desire as well the perpetuity as the presence of those good things wherein stands her proper perfection. And therefore it was excellent counsel of Antisthenes the Philosopher, that a man should lay up such provisions, as in a shipwreck might swim out with him — such treasure as will pass and be current in another world, and will follow us there, which as the Apostle speaks, is to lay up a good foundation against the time to come.

The internal causes moving desire, in regard of the subject or mind of man, may be different according to the different kinds of desires spoken of before. The most general, which respects them all, is a vacuity, indigence, and self-insufficiency of the soul: for having not within itself enough either to preserve it or to content it, it is forced to go out of itself for supplies; for wherever God has implanted sensitive and rational affections, he has been pleased to carry them from themselves, and to direct them abroad for their satisfaction: by that means preserving the soul in humility, and leading it as by degrees up to himself. Every creature, though it has its life in its own possession, yet the preservation of it, it fetches from some things without. The most excellent creatures are beholden to the meaner, both for their nourishment and for their knowledge. And therefore of all graces, God has chosen faith and repentance, as the chief means of carrying us to him, because these two do most carry us out of ourselves, and most acquaint us with our insufficiencies, repentance teaching a man to abhor himself, and faith to deny himself.

Now because Emptiness is the cause of Appetence, we shall hereupon find, that the fullest and most contented men, are ever freest from vast desires. The more the mind of any man is in weight, the more it is in rest too. As they say that in Rivers, ships go slower in the Winter, but withal they carry the greater burdens: So many times men of less urgent and importunate appetites, and motions of mind, are more furnished and better balanced within. In Jotham's Parable the Bramble was more ambitious than the Vine, or the Olive. And the Vine we see which is of all other Arbor Desiderii, the Tree of Desire, is weakest and cannot stand without another to support it. Therefore we shall find that men's desires are strongest when their constitutions are weakest, and their condition lowest; as we see in servants that labor, women that breed, and sick men that long, whose whole life in that time is but a change and miscellany of desires. Thus we see little children will reach at every thing which is before them, being wholly destitute of internal furniture. Vacuity is ever sucking and attractive, and will make even dull and heavy things rise upward. Eager and greedy, various and swarming appetites are usually the signs either of a childish or a sick temper of mind; as the naturalists observe that the least creatures are the greatest breeders, a Mouse brings more young ones than an Elephant.

Only here we must distinguish both of contentment and of desires. There may be a double contentment, the one arising out of sluggishness and narrowness of mind; when men out of an unwillingness to put themselves to the pains of gaining more, rest satisfied with what they have, and had rather have a poor quiet, than a Treasure with labor. As they say of the Fig-tree, though it be least beautiful of other Trees (for it alone bears no flowers) yet withal it is free from Thunder. And as the historian said of some men that they are solà socordiâ Innocentes, do men no hurt only because it would cost them pains to do it: so may we of these, that they are beholding to their torpid and sluggish constitution, for the contentment which they profess to have. And this does not regulate inordinate desires, but only lay them asleep, as even a hungry man when he sleeps, has his hunger sleep with him.

Another contentment there is arising out of Wisdom and practical learning (as the Apostle tells us, that it is a matter of learning to be contented) when the heart being established and made steady with grace, and solid materials within, as a ship with ballast is the less tossed with lower affections, as Saul cared not for his asses when he heard of a Kingdom.

—Grata post munus arista Contingunt homines veteris fastidia quercus. When men had once discovered better corn, They loathed their mast and oaken bread did scorn.

And this kind of contentment does not [reconstructed: stupefy] loose desires, but change them, as the Cat's Unum magnum was more worth to her than all the variety of shifts which the Fox did boast of, and one Sun does more comfort us in the day than many thousand stars in the night.

Again, desires are either of things excellent, as the virtuous and spiritual desires of the soul whereby men move towards God; and these do neither load the heart, nor cloy it, but much rather open and enlarge it for more. No man was so well acquainted with God as Moses, who yet was the more importunate to know him better, I beseech you, show me your glory, nor any man more acquainted with Christ than Saint Paul, who yet desired to be dissolved and to be with Christ nearer.

Other desires are of middle things 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 the philosopher calls them; such as Wealth, Profit, Victory, Honor, which are not good in themselves, but as they are managed. And these desires though not extinguished, yet are very much assuaged, and moderated by the weight and wisdom, of solid contentment. He was the wisest man then alive, and who knew all the quintessence, and whatever was desirable in the Creature, who said Da mihi panem Statutim — Give me the Bread of my Allowance; 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 so much as the quality of my place and state requires, which is that which our Savior limits our desires to, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 our portion and dimensum, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in Saint James, daily food, and was pleased to answer that wise King in that his request, and to give us a record and catalogue of his daily bread.

Another cause of desire may be admiration; a strange thing though monstrous and deformed calls the eyes of every man to it. Rarity is a marvelous Lenocinium, and enticer of desire, [illegible] stiv[illegible] nives, hybern[illegible] rosae as the Panegyrist spoke, snow in the summer and roses in winter; the birds of this country, and the roots of another; [reconstructed: dainties] hardly procured without the shipwrecks of men, to feed the gluttony rather of the eye than of the belly; these are the delights of the curiosities of men. The same fruits when they are worse but rarer, have a far greater value set upon them, than when exposed by their commonness to every man's purchase. And it was a wise complaint of old Cato; that it went ill with the city when a fish was sold for more than an ox. We see desires do not put forth themselves more freely in any than in children; I think the chief reason of it is the same which the philosopher gives of their memories, because every thing to them is new and strange — for strange things as they make stronger impressions upon the retentive, so they do upon the [reconstructed: appetitive faculties]. And therefore we find Herod who cared nothing at all for the doctrine of Christ, because it was holy and divine, had yet a great desire to have seen his miracles, because they were wonderful. And men have traveled far to see those persons and things, the fame whereof they have before admired, strange learning, strange birds and beasts, strange flowers and roots, strange fashions; indeed, strange sins too (which is the curiosity and corruption of nature) are marvelous attractive, and beget emulation among men. Nero gave rewards to the inventors of strange lusts. Even Solomon's ships, besides substantial treasure, did bring home apes and peacocks. Athens which was the eye, the flower, and epitome of Greece (to show that this curiosity is the disease as well of wits, as of childhood) spent all their time and study in inquiring after new things. And for this cause it is (as I conceive) that wise men have made laws to forbid the transporting of their country fruits into other places, lest the sight of them should kindle in strangers a desire to be masters of the countries where they grew, as we see the grapes and figs of Canaan were used as incentives to the expedition of Israel; and hence Plutarch tells us that the word Sycophant is derived to note originally such as detected those who surreptitiously transported figs into other countries. As on the other side we read that the Athenians set up a pillar wherein they published him to be an enemy of the city, who should bring gold out of Media, as an instrument to corrupt them. And the Roman governor commanded his soldiers that they should not carry any gold or silver into the field with them, lest thereby they should be looked on by the [reconstructed: adversary], as the Persians by Alexander, rather as a prey than a foe.

A third cause which I shall touch on of exciting desires, is height and greatness of mind, which cannot well set bounds of measure to itself, as Seneca said in another sense, Magnitudo non habet certum modum. Great minds have great ends, and those can never be advanced but with vast and various desires. A great ship will not be carried with the sail of a lighter. Nor can an eagle fly with the wings of a sparrow. Alexander was not so great in his victories as in his desires, whom one world could not satisfy: nor Pompey in his triumphs, as in his ambition, to whom it was not enough to be great, except he might be the greatest.

Another cause of desires may be curiosity, which is nothing else but a desire of prying into, and listening after the businesses of other men, which is called by Solomon, Ambulatio [reconstructed: Animae]: the walking up and down of the soul, as he elsewhere tells us, that the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth. Such a man being like the witches which Plutarch speaks of, that wore eyes when they went abroad, but put them in a box when they came home. Or like the falconer's hawks that are hooded in the house, and never suffered to use their eyes but to the hurt of other birds: like a man in a dungeon, that sees nothing where he is; but can see a great deal of light abroad at a little passage. So these kind of men have vast desires of foreign knowledge, but wonderfully shun the acquaintance of themselves. As they say of a swine, that he looks every way but upward: so we may of pragmatists, that their eyes look always save only inward. Whereas the minds of prudent men are like the windows of Solomon's Temple, broader inward than outward. As the pillar that went before Israel in the sea, whose light side was towards Israel, but the dark towards Pharaoh: or as the sun in an eclipse, whose light is perfect inwards, though towards us it be darkened. A wise man's eyes are in his head, whereas a fool has [illegible] as it is in the Proverbs, his mind in his heels only to wander and [reconstructed: gad] abroad.