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.
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