Chapter 21: Of Other Causes and Effects of Delight

To these more principal causes of this affection I shall briefly add these few which follow.

1 The suddenness and unexpectedness of a good thing causes the greater delight in it. For expectation of a thing makes the mind feed upon it beforehand, as young gallants who spend upon their estates before they come to them, and by that means make them the less when they come. As sometimes it happens with choice and delicate stomachs, that the sight and smell of their meat does half cloy and satiate them before they have at all tasted any of it: so the long gazing upon that which we desire by expectation does as it were deflower the delight of it before fruition. Whereas on the other side, as the poet expresses it.

[illegible]

No joy in greatness can compare with that, which does our hopes and thoughts anticipate.

So strong and violent has been the immutation which sudden joy has wrought in the body, that many (as I have formerly noted) have been quite overwhelmed by it, and been made partakers of Augustus his wish to enjoy an [illegible] and to die pleasantly. And for this reason it is that new things, and such as we admire, and were not before acquainted with, do usually delight us, because they surprise us, representing a kind of strangeness to the mind, whereby it is enlarged and enriched. For strange and new things have ever the greatest price set upon them. As I noted before of the Roman luxury, that it gloried in no delicates but those which were brought out of strange countries, and did first pose nature, before either feed or adorn it.

2 Strength of desire, does on the other side enlarge the pleasure of fruition, because nature ever delights most in those things which cost us dearest, and strong desires are ever painful. When Darius in his flight drank muddy water, and Ptolemy did eat dry bread, they both professed that they never felt greater pleasure: strength of appetite marvelously increasing the delight in that which satisfied it. For want and difficulty are great preparations to a more feeling fruition, as bees gather excellent honey out of the bitterest herbs. And as we say, Nulla sunt firmiora quam quae ex dubiis facta sunt certa. Those evidences are surest which were made clear out of doubtful. So those pleasures are sweetest, which have had wants and fears and difficulties to provide a welcome for them. And therefore wrestlers and fencers, and such like masters of game, were wont to use their hands to heavy weights, that when in their games they were to use them empty and naked, they might do it with the more expeditiousness and pleasure.

3 Imagination and fancy, either in ourselves or other men, is many times the foundation of delight. Diogenes his sullen and melancholy fancy took as much pleasure in his tub and staff, and water, as other men in their palaces, and amplest provisions. And he in the poet.

Qui se credebat miros audire Tragoedos In vacuo latus sessor Plausorque Theatro. — Cum redit ad sese pol. me occidistis Amici Non servastis ait, cui sic extorta voluptas, Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error. Who thought he heard rare tragedies of wit, And in an empty theater did sit And give applauses: but being healed complains Friends I'm not saved by this your love, but slain, Robbed of that sweet delight I then did find, In the so grateful error of my mind.

Hence likewise it is that men are delighted with mythologies and poetical fables, with elegancies, jests, urbanity, and flowers of wit, with pageants, pomp, triumphs, and public celebrations, because all these and other the like, are either the fruit or food of the imagination.

4 Upon the same reason we are marvelously delighted with lively imitation, as with those arts which do curiously express the works and lineaments of nature. Insomuch that the similitudes of those things do wonderfully content us whose natural deformities we abhor. We are well pleased with Homer's description of Thersites, and with Sophocles his expression of the ulcer of Philoctetes, with Parmeno his imitation of the grunting of a hog, and Theodorus his of the rattling of wheels, with Plautus his description of a chargeable wife, and Horace his of a garrulous companion, though the things themselves we should willingly decline.

5 Those things delight every man which are, as the philosopher speaks, suitably fitted and accommodated to his genius and frame of nature, as in the same plant, the bee feeds on the flower, the bird on the seed, the sheep on the blade, the swine on the root. So in the same author one man observes the rational, another the historical, a third the elegant and more rhetorical passages, with special delight, according as they are best accommodated to the complexion of each mind. And I find it observed out of Hippocrates, that even in the body many times that kind of meat which nature receives with complacency, and with a more particular delight, though in itself it may be worse, yet proves better nourishment to that body than such, as though better in itself, finds yet a reluctance and backwardness of nature to close or correspond with it. The same seeds are not proper for the sand and for the clay, nor the same employments of mind for men of various and different constitutions. Nor is there I believe anything which would more conduce to the general advancement of arts and learning, than if every man's abilities were fixed and limited to that proper course, which his natural sufficiencies did more particularly lead him to. For hereupon would grow a double delight, and by consequence improvement (for everything grows most when it is best pleased) — the one from nature, the other from custom and acquaintance, which conquers and digests the difficulties of everything we set about, and makes them yet more natural to us. And therefore the philosopher reckoning up many things that are pleasant to the mind, puts these two in the first place: those things that are natural, and those that we are accustomed to, wherein there is least violence offered to the inclinations and impressions of nature.

Touching the effects of this passion, I shall name but these few: First, the effects of corporeal delights are only (as I observed out of Aristotle) medicinal; for repairing the breaches and ruins of our decayed natures; for animating and refreshing our languishing spirits; for preserving ourselves in a good ability to execute offices of a higher nature; for furnishing the world with a succession of men, which otherwise the greediness of mortality would in short time devour. These are true and intended ends of those delights, and when they once transgress these bounds, they begin to oppress nature, weaken and distemper the body, clog the mind, and fill the whole man with satiety and loathing, which is the reason (as was even now noted) why men too violently carried away with them, are presently [reconstructed: over-cloyed] with one kind, and must have variety to keep out loathing: which Tacitus observes in that monster of women Messalina, facilitate adulterorum in fastidium versa ad incognitas libidines [reconstructed: prostuebat], that loathing more easy and common sins, she betook herself to unnatural lusts, and I verily think is particularly intended by Saint Paul (Romans 1:26).

A second effect of Joy is opening and dilation of the heart and countenance, expressing the serenity of the mind, from where it has the name Laetitia, as it were a broad and spreading passion. Now the reason of this motion occasioned by Joy, is the natural desire, which man has to be united to the thing wherein he delights to make way and passage for its entrance into him. And hence we find in this passion an exultation and egress of the spirits, discovering a kind of looseness of nature in her security, doing many things not out of resolution, but instinct and power transporting both mind and body to sudden and unpremeditated expressions of its own content: For of all passions, Joy can be the least dissembled or suppressed, nam gaudio cogendi vis inest, says Pliny — it exercises a kind of welcome violence and tyranny upon a man, as we see in David's dancing before the Ark, and the lame man's walking, and leaping, and praising God, after he had been cured of his lameness. And this diffusion of the spirits shows both the haste and forwardness of nature, in striving as it were to meet her object, and make large room for its entertainment, as also to dispel and scatter all adverse humors that would hinder the ingress of it, and lastly to send forth news as it were through the whole province of nature, that all the parts might bear a share in the common comfort.

Thirdly, those noble delights which arise from heavenly causes, do also cause a sweet thirst and longing in the soul after more, as some colors do both delight the sight and strengthen it: For while God is the object, there cannot be either the satiety to cloy the soul, nor such a full comprehension as will leave no room for more.

Thus they who delight in the fruition of God by grace, do desire a more plentiful fruition of him in glory; and they that delight in the sight of God's glory, do still desire to be forever so delighted. So that their desire is without anxiety, because they are satiated with the thing which they do desire, and their joy is without loathing; because still they desire the thing with which they are satiated; they desire without grief, because they are replenished; and they are replenished without weariness, because they desire still; they see God and still they desire to see him: they enjoy God, and still they desire forever to enjoy him: they love and praise God, and make it their immortal business still to love and praise him:

Et quem semper habent, semper habere volunt.

Whom they for ever have, with love yet higher To have for ever, they do still desire.

Divine Joy is like the water of Aesculapius's well, which they say is not capable of putrefaction.

Fourthly, delight whets and intends the actions of the soul towards the thing wherein it delights; it puts forth more force, and more exactness in the doing of them, because it [reconstructed: frees] the mind of all those dulling indispositions which unfitted it for action. And for this reason happily it is, that [reconstructed: the ancients] used music in their wars to refresh and delight nature: For Joy is in place of recreation to the soul, it wonderfully disposes for business. And those actions which nature has made necessary, it has put pleasure in them, that thereby men might be quickened and excited to them; and therefore wise men have told us that pleasure is Sal & [reconstructed: condimentum vitae] — the sauce which seasons the actions of men.

The things which we desire should be, We scarce believe when we do see.

Lastly, because the nature of man is usually more acquainted with sorrows, than with pleasures, therefore whether out of conscience of guilt, which deserves no joy, or out of experience, which uses to find but little joy in the world, or out of fear of our own aptness to mistake, or out of a provident care, not to close or feed upon a delight, till we are fully assured of our possession of it, and because usually the mind after shaking is more settled, whether for these or any other reasons, we see it usually come to pass, that vehement joy does breed a kind of jealousy and unbelief, that surely the thing we have is too good to be true, and that then when our eyes tell us, that they see it, they do but [reconstructed: flatter] and deceive us, as Quod nimis volumus [reconstructed: vix] facile credimus:

So Jacob when he heard that his son Joseph was alive, fainted, being astonished at so good news, and could not believe it. And when God restored the Jews out of captivity, they could think no otherwise of it than as a dream. And Peter when he was by the Angel delivered out of prison, took it for a vision only, and an apparition, and not for a truth (Genesis 45:26; Psalm 126:1; Acts 12:9; Luke 24:41).

And lastly, of the disciples after Christ's resurrection, when he manifested himself to them, it is said, That for very joy they believed not, their fears keeping back, as it were, and questioning the truth of their joys, Omnia tuta timens, not suffering them too hastily to believe what their eyes did see.

As in the sea when a storm is over, there remains still an inward working and volutation, which the poet thus expresses,

Ut si quando ruit, debellavit asque reliquit Eurus aquas, pax ipsa tumet, pontumque jacentem, Exanimis jam voluit hyemem. — As when a mighty tempest does now cease, To toss the roaring billows, even that peace Does swell and murmur, and the dying wind On the calmed sea leaves his own prints behind.

Even so in the mind of man, when its fears are blown over, and there is a calm upon it, there is still a motus trepidationis, and a kind of solicitous jealousy of what it enjoys.

And this unbelief of joy is admirably set forth in the carriages of Penelope, when her nurse and her son endeavored to assure her of the truth of Ulysses his return after so many years absence by the poet, in which doubting she still persisted, till by certain signs Ulysses himself made it appear to her, whereupon she excused it after this manner.

[⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩]

My dear Ulysses let it not offend, that when I saw you first, I did suspend my love with my belief, since my faint breast when first with those glad tidings it was blest, trembled with doubts, lest by such forged lies some crafty, false pretender might devise to have ensnared me, and with these false sounds, defiled my love, and multiplied my wounds.