P26: We strive to affirm, concerning what we hate, whatever we imagine to affect it with Sadness, and on the other hand to deny whatever we imagine to affect it with Joy.

Dem.: This proposition follows from P23, as P25 follows from P21.

Schol.: From these propositions we see that it easily happens that a man thinks more highly of himself and what he loves than is just, and on the other hand, thinks less highly than is just of what he hates. When this imagination concerns the man himself who thinks more highly of himself than is just, it is called Pride, and is a species of Madness, because the man dreams, with open eyes, that he can do all those things which he achieves only in his imagination, and which he therefore regards as real and triumphs in, so long as he cannot imagine those things which exclude the existence {of these achievements} and determine his power of acting.

Pride, therefore, is Joy born of the fact that a man thinks more highly of himself than is just. And the Joy born of the fact that a man thinks more highly of another than is just is called Overestimation, while that which stems from thinking less highly of another than is just is called Scorn.