Key Arguments

• Nature’s efficacy and power are everywhere and always the same; thus there is a single method for understanding all things through universal laws.
• Nothing in nature results from a ‘flaw’; therefore emotions, like all things, arise from necessary causes and can be known through their properties.
• He commits to apply the same rigorous (geometrical) method he used previously to analyze God and the mind to the study of emotions.

Source Quotes

However, such is my plan. Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the same in her efficacy and power of action; that is, nature's laws and ordinances, whereby all things come to pass and change from one form to another, are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules. Thus the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from this same necessity and efficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes, through which they are understood, and possess certain properties as worthy of being known as the properties of anything else, whereof the contemplation in itself affords us delight.

Thus the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from this same necessity and efficacy of nature; they answer to certain definite causes, through which they are understood, and possess certain properties as worthy of being known as the properties of anything else, whereof the contemplation in itself affords us delight. I shall, therefore, treat of the nature and strength of the emotions according to the same method, as I employed heretofore in my investigations concerning God and the mind. I shall consider human actions and desires

Key Concepts

• Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the same in her efficacy and power of action
• there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely, through nature's universal laws and rules
• I shall, therefore, treat of the nature and strength of the emotions according to the same method, as I employed heretofore in my investigations concerning God and the mind

Context

Part III, Preface (lines 1712–1738); methodological declaration for a naturalistic science of the emotions