Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/309

Ch. 20. 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 any thing, that it carries a man no farther 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 farther, 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 profitable 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