101. Accentuate the positive
101. ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE
Is the fear of pain, sorrow, death, and Hell stronger than the love of pleasure, joy, life, and Heaven?
Good is stronger than evil. . . . pleasure is desirable for the sake of the good which is its object, whereas the shunning of sorrow is on account of evil. Therefore the desire for pleasure is more eager than the shunning of sorrow. . . . The reason for this is that the cause of pleasure is a suitable good, while the cause of pain or sorrow is an unsuitable evil. Now it happens that a certain good (the higher goods spoken of in #100) is suitable without any repugnance at all; but it is not possible for any evil to be so unsuitable as not to be suitable in some way. Wherefore pleasure can be entire and perfect, whereas sorrow is always partial. Therefore desire for pleasure is naturally greater than the shunning of sorrow (I-II,3 5,5).
The absence or loss of any good thing, and the sorrow that comes from this, is wholly relative to the goodness of that thing. But the opposite is not true: the good is not relative to the bad. This is the ultimate reason, in the nature of things, why the positive is greater than the negative, why good is greater than evil and why pleasures are greater than pains.
This must be so for a reason of metaphysics. Evil is anti-being; good is pro-being. Evil is the negation of good, but good is not just the negation of evil. Good is absolute; evil is relative (to good). Therefore good is stronger than evil.
And since pleasure is a kind of good, therefore the good of pleasure is stronger than the evil of pain and sorrow.
And therefore the desire for pleasure is greater than the fear of pain. That’s why we often take stupid chances, risking great pain, for the sake of an even greater pleasure.
St. Thomas gives the reason for this in the fact that good can be perfect but evil cannot; for the good we seek is perfect goodness, free from all evil, but the evil we fear is not perfect evil, free from all goodness. There is no perfect evil, free from all goodness. That would be like a brokenness without a thing that is broken. Perfect pleasure is conceivable, perfect sorrow is not.
Yet we often feel the negative (pain, sorrow, fear, death, Hell) more strongly than we feel the positive. That just shows us how unreliable our feelings are as an index to objective reality.
The practical “payoff” in this idea is that we should concentrate much more on good than evil, more on hope than fear, more on virtue than sin, more on love than fear. (In fact, “perfect love casts out fear”—1 Jn 4:18.) St. Thomas says that the most effective way to get rid of a strong evil passion is by an even stronger good passion. So when you are tempted to lust, greed, pride, arrogance, egotism, rage, rebellion, revenge, self-righteousness, or indifference, look at a crucifix. No greater good passion ever existed in this world than Christ’s divine-and-human love that manifested itself there. Put that side by side with your evil and you will get—what? You will get a spiritual battle, a cross, for the Devil will react exactly as Dracula reacts to the crucifix. And then you will get a resurrection.