DES INCLINATIONS, OU DES MOUVEMENTS NATURELS DE L’ESPRIT on Superphysics

Spirits Have Inclinations, just as bodies have motions

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It would not be necessary to treat natural inclinations, as we are going to do in this fourth book, nor of the passions, as we will do in the next, in order to discover the causes of men’s errors, if the understanding did not depend on the will in the perception of objects; but because it receives its direction from it, it is the will that determines it and applies it to some objects rather than to others; it is absolutely necessary to understand its inclinations well, in order to penetrate the causes of the errors to which we are subject.

The inclination for good is the principle of the restlessness of our will

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The inclination for good in general is the principle of the restlessness of our will

This vast capacity that the will has for all goods in general, because it is made only for a good that contains in itself all goods, cannot be filled by all the things that the mind represents to it; and yet this continuous movement that God imprints in it toward the good cannot stop.

Curiosity is Natural and Necessary

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Curiosity is natural and necessary

As long as men have an inclination for a good that surpasses their strength and which they do not possess, they will always have a secret inclination for everything that bears the character of the new and extraordinary; they will incessantly run after things they have not yet considered, in the hope of finding there what they seek, and, their minds being unable to satisfy themselves entirely except by the sight of Him for whom they are made, they will always be in restlessness and agitation until He appears to them in His glory.

The second rule of curiosity

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The second rule of curiosity

The second rule that must be observed is that novelty must never serve us as a reason to believe that things are true. We have already said several times that men must not rest in error and in the false goods they enjoy; that it is just that they seek the evidence of truth and the true good they do not possess, and consequently that they turn toward things that are new and extraordinary to them; but they must not for that always attach themselves to them nor believe, by lightness of mind, that new opinions are true because they are new, and that goods are true because they have not yet enjoyed them. Novelty should only push them to examine new things with care; they must not despise them, since they do not know them, nor believe so rashly that they contain what they wish and what they hope.

The Second natural inclination: self-love

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The second natural inclination: self-love

The second inclination that the author of nature incessantly imprints in our will is the love of ourselves and of our own preservation. We have already said that God loves all His works, that it is His love alone for them that preserves them, and that He wills that all created spirits have the same inclinations as Himself. He wills therefore that they all have a natural inclination for their preservation and their happiness, or that they love themselves.

The inclination we have for everything that elevates us above others

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The inclination we have for everything that elevates us above others

All the things that give us a certain elevation above others, either by rendering us more perfect, such as knowledge and virtue, or by giving us some authority over them, by rendering us more powerful, such as dignities and riches, seem to make us in some way independent. All those who are below us revere and fear us; they are always ready to do what pleases us for our preservation, and they dare not harm us nor resist us in our desires. Thus men always try to possess these advantages that elevate them above others. For they do not reflect that their being and their well-being depend, according to truth, only on God, and not on men; and that the true greatness that will make them eternally happy does not consist in that rank they hold in the imagination of other men, as weak and as miserable as themselves; but in the honorable rank they hold in the divine reason, in that all-powerful reason that will render eternally to each according to his works.

The desire for knowledge

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The desire for knowledge, and on the judgments of false scholars

The human mind undoubtedly has very little capacity and extent, and yet there is nothing it does not wish to know; all human sciences cannot satisfy its desires, and its capacity is so narrow that it cannot perfectly understand a single particular science. It is continually agitated, and it always desires to know, either because it hopes to find what it seeks, as we have said in the preceding chapters, or because it persuades itself that its soul and its mind are enlarged by the vain possession of some extraordinary knowledge. The disordered desire for its happiness and its greatness makes it study all the sciences, hoping to find its happiness in the moral sciences, and seeking this false greatness in the speculative sciences.

The desire to appear learned

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The desire to appear learned

If the disordered desire to become learned often renders men more ignorant, the desire to appear learned not only renders them more ignorant, but it seems to overturn their minds; for there is an infinity of people who lose common sense because they wish to pass for having it, and who say only foolish things because they wish to say only paradoxes. They distance themselves so far from all common thoughts in the design they have of acquiring the quality of rare and extraordinary minds, that in effect they succeed, and they are regarded no longer either with admiration or with much contempt.

How the Inclination for Dignities and Riches Leads to Error

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dignities and riches, as well as virtue and the sciences of which we have just spoken, are the principal things that elevate us above other men, for it seems that our being expands and becomes as if independent through the possession of these advantages, so that the love we bear to ourselves spreading naturally even to dignities and riches, one can say that there is no one who does not have for them some inclination, great or small. Let us explain briefly how these inclinations prevent us from finding truth and engage us in falsehood and error.

The Love of Pleasure in Relation to Morals

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The preceding 3 chapters spoke of the inclination we have for the preservation of our being, and how it causes us to fall into several errors.

I now speak of that which we have for well-being—that is, for pleasures and for all things that make us happier and more content, or that we believe capable of this—and we shall try to discover the errors that arise from this inclination.

On the Love of Pleasure in Relation to Speculative Sciences

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The inclination we have for sensible pleasures, being ill-regulated, is not only the origin of the dangerous errors into which we fall in moral subjects and the general cause of the disorder of our morals; it is also one of the principal causes of the disorder of our mind, and it imperceptibly engages us in very gross but less dangerous errors on purely speculative subjects; because this inclination prevents us from bringing to things that do not affect us enough attention to understand them and to judge them well.

The Effects that the Thought of Future Goods and Evils is Capable of Producing in the Mind

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If it often happens that small pleasures and slight pains, which one feels at present or even expects to feel, strangely confuse our imagination and prevent us from judging things according to their true ideas, one must not imagine that the expectation of eternity does not act upon our mind; but it is appropriate to consider what it is capable of producing there.

Friendship Toward Others

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The third natural inclination: Friendship

To properly understand the cause and effects of this natural inclination, we must know that