Arnold Geulincx, Ethics, tr. Martin Wilson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), treatise I., ch. I. On Virtue in general, §1. Love, sect. I., pp. 11-12 (added two annotations included in page 169 et seq.):
Love has a variety of meanings; and first of all, it signifies a certain Affect, or passion, which caresses the human mind, and fills it with tenderness. In fact, this passion, which is widely called Love, is the entire, exclusive, and sole delight of the human mind, insofar as it is human and joined to a body. For even though the human mind, insofar as it is a mind, is capable of more elevated pleasures (such as the mere approbation of its own actions, when they accord with Divine Law), nevertheless, insofar as it is joined to a body, and born to act on it, and in turn to receive something from it, and as it were be acted upon by it, it knows no other tenderness than passion. Hence, Joys, Delights, Merriment, Laughter, Rejoicing, Jubilation, and the like, are only diverse names for Love. What is tender in Desire, Hope, Trust, and the like, and positively affects and calms the mind, is indeed Love;3 but what troubles and afflicts the mind, is not Love but some other affection that is involved with them at the same time as Love. Now the pleasure of a mind separated and withdrawing itself from the body (which, as I have said, consists in the bare approbation of its own actions, inasmuch as they assent to Divine Law) seems for the most part so meagre, so tenuous and rarefied, that men hardly or not at all consider it to be worthy of the name of Pleasure. And when this spiritual delight is sterile, and does not produce5 the corporeal and sensible pleasure (passionate Love) which in other cases it usually does produce, they complain that they have to live a life of sorrow and austerity, that they are wasting away, and that for all that they obey God and Reason, they are destitute of all reward and consolation.
3 Desire is nothing other than love of something absent; and it therefore contains in itself both tenderness (love), and affliction or bitterness (the anguish caused by the absence of the thing loved). Hope is nothing other than love directed towards a future good of which we can be frustrated; and again therefore it contains tenderness (that is, passionate love) and bitterness (that is, fear of being frustrated of that good). And trust is nothing other than great hope, that is, great love combined with a little fear. I do not offer these definitions in order to show what these things are (they are perfectly well-known from consciousness itself, as I noted just now), but, since they affect us partly for good and partly for ill (as our feelings make quite clear), in order to show why they please us, or harm and afflict us, according as they involve respectively love or some other emotion.
5 When we approve of some action of ours inwardly and in our mind, with our conscience assuring us that it accords with right Reason, that is, the law of God, it often leads to pleasure, or passionate love, of indescribable sweetness. Virtuous men may be so ravished by this passion that they make light of those calamities commonly known as ruin, infamy, the harshness of imprisonment, torments, and a thousand natural shocks, in fact do not seem even to feel them. But sometimes this mental pleasure is not accompanied by bodily pleasure, which consists wholly in some passion or other; for passion depends on the constitution of our body, and may have a mental cause that on account of the incapacity of the body does not pass into our body itself. On the other hand, passion may have no mental cause, but nevertheless pass into our body on account of the capacity of the body: in this case we feel pleasure without any underlying cause of pleasure.
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