such objects is against right reason. Such conditional desires, then, are sinful, unless they indicate a mere propensity towards such sins without any voluntary affection of the will. In any case, however, they are dangerous, and should not be indulged or expressed.
3. Morose pleasure in the imagination of what is evil is what ordinary Catholics mean by a bad thought in the restricted sense. It is sinful when voluntary, for it is an approbation, a satisfaction in what is wrong; it is an act of the will which is specified by a bad object, and so it derives its special character and malice from the object. To take pleasure, then, in the thought of revenge, is a different sin from taking pleasure in the thought of adultery.
There is a difference, however, between the source of the malice of evil desires and of morose pleasures. We have seen that evil desires contract all the malice of the object and of its circumstances. Morose pleasure, too, contracts the malice of its object and of any circumstance which is a motive of the pleasure, but not of other circumstances which may belong to the object in the concrete. For the will in morose pleasure tends to the object not as it exists in the concrete with all its circumstances, but as it is represented in the imagination, and precisely in so far as the object thus represented allures the appetite. Morose pleasure, then, takes its malice from the object, but not from all the circumstances of the object.
Taking pleasure in an evil imagination must be distinguished from taking pleasure in the thought of sin. It is not sinful to take pleasure in thinking about pride, for example, and trying to penetrate its malice. Knowledge naturally gives pleasure and in itself is not sinful. But it is dangerous to think about some sins, about sins of lust or revenge, for example, and on account of the danger it is wrong to think about sins of the flesh without good reason. Thinking about such sins with good and sufficient reason is not sinful, for the danger of sin is not sin, and it may be neglected for sufficient cause; if there is not sufficient reason and the danger of consent is small, it will be a venial sin; if the danger of consent be proximate and the matter grave, the sin will be mortal.
4. Morose pleasure in certain definite sins of one's past life has for its object the sins as they were actually committed with all their circumstances, and so it will be infected with all the malice of the circumstances. Morose pleasure in past sins is thus similar in its malice to evil desires, and on this
