1. Pleasure and pain, simple ideas. Amongst the simple ideas which we receive both from sensation
and reflection, pain and pleasure are two very considerable ones. For as in the body there is
sensation barely in itself, or accompanied with pain or pleasure, so the thought or perception of the
mind is simply so, or else accompanied also with pleasure or pain, delight or trouble, call it how you
please. These, like other simple ideas, cannot be described, nor their names defined; the way of
knowing them is, as of the simple ideas of the senses, only by experience. For, to define them by
the presence of good or evil, is no otherwise to make them known to us than by making us reflect on
what we feel in ourselves, upon the several and various operations of good and evil upon our minds,
as they are differently applied to or considered by us.
2. Good and evil, what. Things then are good or evil, only in reference to pleasure or pain. That we
call good, which is apt to cause or increase pleasure, or diminish pain in us; or else to procure or
preserve us the possession of any other good or absence of any evil. And, on the contrary, we name
that evil which is apt to produce or increase any pain, or diminish any pleasure in us: or else to
procure us any evil, or deprive us of any good. By pleasure and pain, I must be understood to mean
of body or mind, as they are commonly distinguished; though in truth they be only different
constitutions of the mind, sometimes occasioned by disorder in the body, sometimes by thoughts of
the mind.
3. Our passions moved by good and evil. Pleasure and pain and that which causes them,--good and
evil, are the hinges on which our passions turn. And if we reflect on ourselves, and observe how
these, under various considerations, operate in us; what modifications or tempers of mind, what
internal sensations (if I may so call them) they produce in us we may thence form to ourselves the
ideas of our passions.
4. Love. Thus any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the delight which any present or absent
thing is apt to produce in him, has the idea we call love. For when a man declares in autumn when
he is eating them, or in spring when there are none, that he loves grapes, it is no more but that the
taste of grapes delights him: let an alteration of health or constitution destroy the delight of their
taste, and he then can be said to love grapes no longer.
5. Hatred. On the contrary, the thought of the pain which anything present or absent is apt to
produce in us, is what we call hatred. Were it my business here to inquire any further than into the
bare ideas of our passions, as they depend on different modifications of pleasure and pain, I should
remark, that our love and hatred of inanimate insensible beings is commonly founded on that
pleasure and pain which we receive from their use and application any way to our senses, though
with their destruction. But hatred or love, to beings capable of happiness or misery, is often the
uneasiness or delight which we find in ourselves, arising from a consideration of their very being or
happiness. Thus the being and welfare of a man's children or friends, producing constant delight in
him, he is said constantly to love them. But it suffices to note, that our ideas of love and hatred are
but the dispositions of the mind, in respect of pleasure and pain in general, however caused in us.
6. Desire. The uneasiness a man finds in himself upon the absence of anything whose present
enjoyment carries the idea of delight with it, is that we call desire; which is greater or less, as that
uneasiness is more or less vehement. Where, by the by, it may perhaps be of some use to remark,
that the chief, if not only spur to human industry and action is uneasiness. For whatsoever good is
proposed, if its absence carries no displeasure or pain with it, if a man be easy and content without
it, there is no desire of it, nor endeavour after it; there is no more but a bare velleity, the term used to
signify the lowest degree of desire, and that which is next to none at all, when there is so little
uneasiness in the absence of anything, that it carries a man no further than some faint wishes for it,
without any more effectual or vigorous use of the means to attain it. Desire also is stopped or abated
by the opinion of the impossibility or unattainableness of the good proposed, as far as the
uneasiness is cured or allayed by that consideration. This might carry our thoughts further, were it
seasonable in this place.
7. Joy is a delight of the mind, from the consideration of the present or assured approaching
possession of a good; and we are then possessed of any good, when we have it so in our power
that we can use it when we please. Thus a man almost starved has joy at the arrival of relief, even
before he has the pleasure of using it: and a father, in whom the very well-being of his children
causes delight, is always, as long as his children are in such a state, in the possession of that good;
for he needs but to reflect on it, to have that pleasure.
8. Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of a good lost, which might have been
enjoyed longer; or the sense of a present evil.
9. Hope is that pleasure in the mind, which every one finds in himself, upon the thought of a
probable future enjoyment of a thing which is apt to delight him.
10. Fear is an uneasiness of the mind, upon the thought of future evil likely to befal us.
11. Despair is the thought of the unattainableness of any good, which works differently in men's
minds, sometimes producing uneasiness or pain, sometimes rest and indolency.
12. Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind, upon the receipt of any injury, with a present
purpose of revenge.
13. Envy is an uneasiness of the mind, caused by the consideration of a good we desire obtained by
one we think should not have had it before us.
14. What passions all men have. These two last, envy and anger, not being caused by pain and
pleasure simply in themselves, but having in them some mixed considerations of ourselves and
others, are not therefore to be found in all men, because those other parts, of valuing their merits, or
intending revenge, is wanting in them. But all the rest, terminating purely in pain and pleasure, are, I
think, to be found in all men. For we love, desire, rejoice, and hope, only in respect of pleasure; we
hate, fear, and grieve, only in respect of pain ultimately. In fine, all these passions are moved by
things, only as they appear to be the causes of pleasure and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some
way or other annexed to them. Thus we extend our hatred usually to the subject (at least, if a
sensible or voluntary agent) which has produced pain in us; because the fear it leaves is a constant
pain: but we do not so constantly love what has done us good; because pleasure operates not so
strongly on us as pain, and because we are not so ready to have hope it will do so again. But this by
the by.
15. Pleasure and pain, what. By pleasure and pain, delight and uneasiness, I must all along be
understood (as I have above intimated) to mean not only bodily pain and pleasure, but whatsoever
delight or uneasiness is felt by us, whether arising from any grateful or unacceptable sensation or
reflection.
16. Removal or lessening of either. It is further to be considered, that, in reference to the passions,
the removal or lessening of a pain is considered, and operates, as a pleasure: and the loss or
diminishing of a pleasure, as a pain.
17. Shame. The passions too have most of them, in most persons, operations on the body, and
cause various changes in it; which not being always sensible, do not make a necessary part of the
idea of each passion. For shame, which is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought of having
done something which is indecent, or will lessen the valued esteem which others have for us, has
not always blushing accompanying it.
18. These instances to show how our ideas of the passions are got from sensation and reflection. I
would not be mistaken here, as if I meant this as a Discourse of the Passions; they are many more
than those I have here named: and those I have taken notice of would each of them require a much
larger and more accurate discourse. I have only mentioned these here, as so many instances of
modes of pleasure and pain resulting in our minds from various considerations of good and evil. I
might perhaps have instanced in other modes of pleasure and pain, more simple than these; as the
pain of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of eating and drinking to remove them: the pain of teeth
set on edge; the pleasure of music; pain from captious uninstructive wrangling, and the pleasure of
rational conversation with a friend, or of well-directed study in the search and discovery of truth. But
the passions being of much more concernment to us, I rather made choice to instance in them, and
show how the ideas we have of them are derived from sensation or reflection.