a. On the First Mode or Way of being Sad, that is, on Sadness as it Arises from an Object that is not Wanted

47. Further, the like things must to some extent be said about sadness and to some extent not. Sense appetite, indeed, has something absolute that is of its nature agreeable to it (as an extrinsic perfective thing) and something disagreeable to it (as an extrinsic corruptive thing); and in this respect the like holds true of the will. But in another respect there is a difference, because the sense appetite is drawn naturally to its object (hence, according to Damascene, ch. 38, 2.22, “[sense appetite] is led and does not lead”), whereas the same is not true of an object taken in relation to the will, which is free. Still, there is an object that is of its nature agreeable to the will, namely the ultimate end, since this end is in ultimate agreement with the will through an act of the will accepting it and being pleased with it. And such agreement occurs through wanting the object, or disagreement occurs through not wanting the object; and thus the relations of agreement and disagreement (which accompany the ideas of the willed and the unwanted object) are followed by coming close to this object, namely the apprehension that the thing wanted or not wanted really exists; and from this last fact there seems to follow in the will a passion caused by the object by its very presence, namely joy and sadness.

48. Now the fact that sadness properly taken is a passion of the will seems to be because sadness is not an action or operation of the will; for that it is not an act of willing is plain, and the proof that it is not a not wanting or a not willing is that God and the blessed can supremely not want and not will something, but they cannot be saddened, for that with respect to which they have a not wanting or a not willing cannot come about; “but sadness is about things that happen to us against our will,” according to Augustine [n.25]. The point is clear from the fact that God, when he supremely does not want something, prohibits it from ever happening; but when such a not wanting something exists in a wayfarer and the thing happens, the wayfarer will be saddened, and he will be the more saddened the more his will is against it (from Augustine’s definition of sadness). There will then be something in the wayfarer that was not there before, because he was not saddened before. But there is no operation in the wayfarer, either simply so or to any degree that it was not present before. Nor again does the passion exist in the will as something brought about by the will, for then the will would have immediate power over it, just as it has power over willing and not willing. But the will does not have such power; for when something unwanted happens to someone who does not will it, he seems not to have the resulting sadness in his immediate power. Further, if the sadness were from the will as from an active power, it would be an operation of the will, just as ‘willing’ is, which is an operation from the will and in the will.

49. If it be objected that then the object is necessarily acting on the will by imposing passion on it (which seems to be against the will’s freedom), my response is that the will is not simply necessitated by the object, but rather that, between the things that are shown to it, there can be a necessity of consequence, as with ‘if I will, I will’. Thus, if there is a not wanting some object and that not wanted object comes about, then it necessarily follows, by the necessity of consequence, that there can be sadness in the will. An example is a free man who voluntarily holds land burdened by a duty of service. It is not immediately in this man’s power not to fulfill the service but on the contrary to fulfill it - or it is immediately in his power to give up holding the land and, thereby, not to be bound to service, or not to serve. So in the issue at hand, it is immediately in the will’s power not to will against the object and, thereby, not to be saddened by the object if it comes about, for then the object would not be something he does not want; but if there is something he does not want and that something comes about, then, as long as his not wanting it remains, sadness follows necessarily by the necessity of consequence.

50. And if it be asked ‘why then can the will not receive a passion from the object as it receives the volition itself from the willed object?’ - I reply that the will as will is free but as not wanting it is not free formally, because it then has a form determined to one particular thing, which form is that very not wanting. But although what is free does not, as free, immediately receive a passion from the object, yet as determined to one of the opposites (which determination is a natural form for it) it can be determinately disposed by that form to one of the objects and not be open to both, and so it can suffer.