Chapter 19: Of the Affection of Delight — Its Several Objects
The next passions in order belonging to the concupiscible faculty, are those two, which are wrought by the presence of, and union to an object; and that is, when either we by our desires have reached the object, which works joy and delight: or when in our flight the object has overtaken us, which works grief and sorrow. And these two do bear the most inward relation to and influence upon all our actions. Therefore Aristotle in his Ethics has made them the foundation of our virtues, and rules of our working. And the reason is natural, because the end of our motion is to attain rest, and avoid perturbation. Now delight is nothing else but the Sabbath of our thoughts, and that sweet tranquility of mind, which we receive from the presence and fruition of that good, to which our desires have carried us. And therefore the philosopher in one place calls it a motion of the soul with a sensible and felt instauration of nature, yet elsewhere he as truly tells us that it stands rather in rest than motion; as on the other side grief is the straightening and anguish of our minds wrought out of the sense and burden of some present evil oppressing our nature. Now these passions are diverse, according to the diversity of the objects: which are either sensitive and bodily; and then delight is called Voluptas Pleasure, being a medicine and supply against bodily indigence and defects: or intellectual and divine, and then it is called Gaudium Joy, being a sweet and delightful tranquility of mind, resting in the fruition and possession of a good. So also is the other passion of sadness considered; which in respect of the body is called a sense of pain; in respect of the soul, a sense of grief.
First then for the object of our delight; it is only that which can yield some manner of satisfaction to our nature, not as it is a corrupt and erring, but as it is an empty and perfectible nature. Whatever then is either medicinal for the repairing, or natural for the conserving, or any way helpful for the advancing of a creature, is the only true and allowable object of its delight. Other pleasures which eat out and undermine nature, as water which by little and little insensibly consumes the bank against which it beats, or as [reconstructed: ivy] which seems to adorn the tree to which it cleaves, but indeed sucks out and steals away the sap thereof, may perhaps yield some measure of vanishing content to minds, which taste every thing with a corrupted palate; but certainly such sophistical premises can never infer in the conclusion any other than a perfunctory and tottering content. And therefore Seneca is bold to find an impropriety in Virgil's epithet, Mala Gaudia, joys which issue from a polluted fountain; as not having in them that inseparable attribute of absolute delight; which is to be invariable. For how can a mind (unless blinded with its own impostures, and entangled in the errors of a misled affection) receive any nourishing and solid content in that, which is in itself vanishing, and to its subject destructive? Whatever then may be delighted in, must have some one of the forenamed conditions, tending either to the restitution of decayed nature, to the preservation of entire nature, or to the perfection of empty nature. And to the former and [reconstructed: imperfecter] sort of these, Aristotle refers all corporeal and sensitive pleasures (to which he therefore grants a secondary and accidental goodness) which he calls [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] the medicines of an indigent nature; whereby the defects thereof are made up, and itself disburdened of those cares, which for the most part use to follow the want of them.
Herein then I observe a double corruption; an unnatural and unlimited delight. Unnatural, I mean those accursed pleasures, which were exercised by men given over to vile affections and in the pursuing of lusts, whose very names abhor the light. Unlimited delights are those, which exceed the bounds of nature, and the prime institution of lawful and indifferent things. For such is the condition of those, that if they repair not, and strengthen nature, they weaken and disable it; as in the body luxury breeds diseases, and in the mind curiosity breeds errors.
Other objects there are of a wider nature than those, which concern the body; and they are both the moral and contemplative actions of the mind; To both which Aristotle has attributed principally this passion; but more specially to the latter, whose object is more pure and whose acts less laborious, as residing in that part of the soul, which is most elevated from sense: and therefore most of all capable of the purest simplest and unmixed delights. Now every thing is the more free, clear, independent; spiritual, by how much it is the more unmixed. And these are the choicest perfections, whereby the soul may be filled with joy. It is true indeed, that oftentimes the contemplations of the mind have annexed to them both grief and anxiety; but this is never natural to the act of knowledge, which is always in its own virtue an impression of pleasure: But it arises either out of the sublimity of the object, which dazzles the power; or out of the weakness and doubtings of the understanding, which has not a clear light thereof; or out of the admixtion and [reconstructed: steeping] them in the humors of the affections, whereby men minister to themselves desperate thoughts or weak fears, or guilty griefs, or unlimited desires, according as is the property of the object joined with their own private distempers: Thus we see the intuition of divine truth in minds of defiled affections, works not that sweet effect which is natural to it, to produce, but doubtings, terrors and disquietings of conscience; it being the property of the works of darkness to be afraid of the word of light. But of all these former objects of man's delight (because they are among Solomon's catalogue of things under the sun) none are here without vexation and vanities: For to let pass the lightning of an idle mirth, which indeed is madness and not joy. For Seneca tells us that true joy is a serious and severe thing: and not to meddle with riches and other secular delights, which have wings to fly from us and thorns to prick us, even that highest natural delight of the mind, knowledge, and the heavenly eloquence of the tongues of angels (which a man would think were above the sun, and therefore not liable to Solomon's vanity) would be in man, without the right corrective thereof, but a tinkling noise, yielding rather a windy pleasure than a true delight. The properties thereof is not to puff up, but to replenish. And therefore it is the prayer of Saint Paul, The God of Peace fill you with all joy. True heavenly joy is a filling, a satiating joy: a joy unspeakable, with Saint Peter; a peace past understanding, with Saint Paul. Nor does this property of overflowing and swallowing the mind add any degrees of offense or anxiety to it: for it is not the weakness of the soul, as it is of the body to receive hurt from the excellency of that which it delights in, nor does the mind desire to subdue or conquer, but only to be united with its object.
And here the only corruption of our delight is, the deficiency and imperfections of it. For though this blessed light leaves not any man in the shadow of death, yet it takes him not quite out of the shadow of sin, by the darkness whereof he is without much of that luster and glory, which he shall then have, when the righteous shall shine like the sun in the firmament. Yet at the least our endeavors must be, that though our joys cannot be here a replenishing joy, yet it may be an operative joy, and so work out the measure of its own fullness. I have done with the several objects of man's delight, corporeal, moral, intellectual and divine.
