Thus, when we receive news, the mind first of all
judges of it, and if the news be good, it rejoices with that
intellectual joy (GAUDIUM INTELLECTUALE) which is independent of any
emotion (COMMOTIO) of the body, and which the Stoics did not deny to
their wise man [although they supposed him exempt from all passion].
But as soon as this joy passes from the understanding to the
imagination, the spirits flow from the brain to the muscles that are
about the heart, and there excite the motion of the small nerves, by
means of which another motion is caused in the brain, which affects
the mind with the sensation of animal joy (LAETITIA ANIMALIS). On
the same principle, when the blood is so thick that it flows but
sparingly into the ventricles of the heart, and is not there
sufficiently dilated, it excites in the same nerves a motion quite
different from the preceding, which, communicated to the brain,
gives to the mind the sensation of sadness, although the mind itself
is perhaps ignorant of the cause of its sadness. And all the other
causes which move these nerves in the same way may also give to the
mind the same sensation.
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