Chapter 5: Of Passions, Their Nature and Distribution

I now proceed to the soul of man: of which, I must speak in a double reference; either according to its motions and impressions which it makes on the body, and receives from it; or according to those more immanent perfections which it has within itself: under the former of these, come to be considered the passions of man's mind, with the more notable perfections and corruptions (as far as my weakness can discover) which the soul and body contracted from them.

Passions are nothing else, but those natural, perfective, and unstrained motions of the creatures to that advancement of their natures, which they are by the wisdom, power, and providence of their Creator, in their own several spheres, and according to the proportion of their capacities, ordained to receive, by a regular inclination to those objects, whose goodness bears a natural convenience or virtue of satisfaction to them; or by an antipathy and aversion from those, which bearing a contrariety to the good they desire, must needs be noxious and destructive, and by consequence, odious to their natures. This being the property of all unconstrained self-motions, it follows, that the root and ground of all passions, is principally the good; and secondarily, or by consequence, the evil of things: as one bears with it rationem convenientiae, a quieting and satisfactory; the other, rationem disconvenientiae, a disturbing and destroying nature.

This being premised touching the nature and general essence of passions, the division of them must be then grounded; because (as philosophy teaches us) faculties and operations receive their essential distinctions from their objects, and those several respects wherewith they in order to the faculty are qualified. Now, since all appetite (being a blind power) is dependent upon the direction of some knowledge; from the diversity of knowledge in, or annexed to things, may be gathered the prime distinction of passions.

Knowledge, in respect of created agents, may be considered, either as disjoined, and extrinsical to the things moved, or [reconstructed: as] intrinsical and united to it; both which serve as a law and rule, to regulate the inclinations of each nature, that they might not swerve into disordered and confused, or into idle and vain motions, but might ever work towards that fixed end, which God has appointed them to move to.

Passions which proceed from knowledge severed and extrinsical, are those motions of merely natural agents; which are guided to their general or particular ends, by the wisdom and power of him that made them. And this it is which causes that peremptory and uniform order, observed by these kind of agents in their natural course, never either swerving or desisting therefrom, so far as the condition of the matter and subject whereon they work permits them; because they are all governed by an immutable, most wise, and most constant law, proceeding from a will with which there is no variableness nor shadow of changing. And therefore we find those aberrations and irregularities of nature, wherein it swerves from this law only, or at least principally in these inferior things; wherein partly from the deficiency and languishing of secondary agents, and partly from the excesses, defects, mutability, and the like exigencies of matter, we find sundry times error and enormity in their several works and ends: Which, whether it be to set forth the beauty of regular operations (which by deformity and confusion will appear more beautiful; or whether the original thereof be divine malediction, which for the sin of man he is pleased to lay upon his fellow creatures, which were all created for his comfort and service, (which Saint Paul calls the vanity of the creature) it proceeds certainly from the will and power of that law-giver, who is only able, so reasons best known to his own wisdom, to dispense sometimes with that otherwise unalterable law, which he gave all his creatures to observe: So that all the miracles which ever God has been pleased to work, for the conversion of men to the faith, or confirmation in it, were but so many exceptions and dispensations from that general law.

But, as I said, those irregularities and deviations before spoken of, are seen principally in inferior things. The earth, being the principal creature that did bear the curse of man's fall, which made (if we will believe that relation, though I rather suppose it to be fictitious) the heathen philosopher, upon observation of that wonderful eclipse of the sun at the passion of our Saviour, to cry out, Aut Deus Naturae patitur, aut Mundi machina dissolvetur; either the God of nature suffers, or the frame of nature dissolves: Either something hinders that universal power, which sustains and animates all the creatures, or he does at least willingly detain that virtue and the vigor of that law; without execution whereof, there cannot but follow a laxation of the whole frame: which particular I have the rather observed, to note, that the more raised and heavenly a nature is, the more stable and constant likewise it is, to every divine law imposed on it.

Now, this natural passion which I speak of, is called by sundry names among philosophers, the law, the equity, the weight, the instinct, the bond, the love, the covenant and league of natural things in order, to the conservation of themselves, propagation of their kind, perfection, and order of the universe, service of man, and glory of the Creator; which are the alone ends of all natural agents.

By all which we are given to understand, that when at any time the ordinary course of nature is intermitted, when any creature forsakes its native motion, and falls into confusion and disorder, there is then admitted a breach of a law; or, as Aristotle calls it, [illegible], an error, (which Saint James tells us, is [illegible], an iniquity of nature) also a certain levity, uselessness, and emptiness of true worth, which I call in Saint Paul's phrase, the vanity of the creature: thirdly, looseness, decay, and dissolution; and thereupon, discord and unserviceableness towards the other parts, with which it should jointly conspire for the glory of the whole.

These are the inconveniences that follow nature; how much greater are those which follow reason's disobedience: for all this, touching the passions of nature, I have observed only to give light to those of reason, there being the same proportion of government in them all; saving that, what in things destitute of all knowledge is guided by the lawgiver himself, is in the rest performed by a knowledge conjoined and intrinsical to the worker — and this is either mental, or sensitive, or rational — from all which arise sundry degrees of motions, or passions. Mental passions are those high, pure, and abstracted delights, or other the like agitations of the supreme part of the Understanding, which Aristotle calls 〈in non-Latin alphabet〉, the Latins, Mens, or Apex animi; which are the most simple actions of the mind, wherein is the least intermixture or commerce with inferior and earthy [reconstructed: faculties]. Which motions are grounded first on an extraordinary knowledge, either of vision and revelation, or of an exquisite natural apprehension — both of which are beyond the compass of usual industry, here to attain to. The former of these I call, with the Schoolmen, Ecstasy and Rapture; such as Saint Paul's was (for so himself called it) Novi hominem raptum (2 Corinthians 12:2); and such as were the passions of the mind in the prophets and holy men of God, when they were inspired with such heavenly revelations as did slide into the soul with that luster and abundance of light that they could not but ravish it with ineffable and glorious delight. And such, no doubt, is that joy unspeakable, and peace past understanding, which the Apostle makes to be the fruits of the Spirit of God in those hearts wherein he lodges; whereby the purest and most abstracted part of the soul, the mind, is lifted up to some glimpses and apprehensions of that future glory which in heaven does fill the spirits of men with ineffable light.

And for the latter branch, Aristotle has placed his greatest felicity in the contemplation of the highest and most divine truths; which he makes to be the object of that supreme part of the soul. And it was the speech of the philosopher [reconstructed: Heraclitus] to the same purpose, that Animae sicca est sapientissima, (which touches something upon that of Aristotle, that melancholy complexions are usually the wisest, for that temper is the driest of all the rest) that a mind not steeped in the humors of carnal and gross affections, nor drenched in the waves of a disquiet fancy, but more raised and soaring to its [reconstructed: origin], by divine contemplations, is always endowed with the greater wisdom.

Another knowledge from which the passions of this faculty are raised in man is that light of natural principles which the Schools call Synteresis; to which, the custody of all practical truths being committed, they from there work in the conscience motions of joy, love, peace, fear, horror, despair, and the like spiritual passions, according as the soul, out of those general principles, shall gather to its own particulars any either delightful or disquieting conclusions.

Sensitive passions are those motions of prosecution or flight which are grounded on the fancy, [reconstructed: Memory], and apprehensions of the common sense: which we see in brute beasts; as in the fear of hares or sheep, the fierceness of wolves, the anger or [reconstructed: flattery] of dogs, and the like. So Homer describes the joy of Ulysses' dog, which after his so long absence remembered him at his return.

〈in non-Latin alphabet〉.

For wanton joy to see his master near, he waved his flattering tail, and tossed each ear.

Now these motions in brute creatures, if we will believe Seneca, are not affections, but certain characters and impressions ad similitudinem passionum — like passions in men — which he calls Impetus, the risings, forces, and impulsions of nature upon the view of such objects as are apt to strike any impressions upon it.

I come therefore to those middle passions which I called rational; not formally, as if they were in themselves acts of reason, or barely immaterial motions of the soul; but by way of participation and dependence, by reason of their immediate subordination in man to the government of the Will and Understanding, and not barely of the fancy, as in other creatures. And for calling passion thus governed reasonable, I have the warrant of Aristotle: who, though the sensitive appetite in man be of itself unreasonable (and therefore by him contradivided to the rational powers of the soul), yet by reason of that obedience which it owes to the dictates of the Understanding, to which nature has ordained it to be subject and conformable (though corruption has much slackened and unknit that bond), he justly affirms it to be in some sort a reasonable faculty, not intrinsically in itself, but by way of participation and influence from reason.

Now passion thus considered, is divided according to the several references it has to its object; which is principally, the good; and secondarily, the evil of things; and either considered after a sundry manner: for they may be taken either barely and alone, or under the consideration of some difficulty and danger accompanying them. And both these again are to be determined with some particular condition of union or distance to the subject; for all objects offend or delight the faculty, in virtue of their union to it; and therefore, according as things are united or distant, so do they occasion passions of a different nature in the mind. The object then may be considered simply in its own nature, as it precisely abstracts from all other circumstances, including only the natural convenience or disconvenience which it bears to the faculty: and so the passions are, in respect of good, love; in respect of evil, hatred — which are the two radical, fundamental, and most transcendent passions of all the rest; and therefore well called Pondera and Impetus animi, the weight and force, and (as I may so speak) the first springings and outgoings of the soul. Secondly, the object may be considered, as absent from the subject, in regard of real union (though never without that which the schools call unio objectiva, union of apprehension in the understanding) without which there can be no passion: and the object thus considered, works, if it be good, desire; if evil, [reconstructed: Flight], and abomination. Thirdly, it may be considered as present, by a real contract or union with the faculty; and so it works, if good, delight, and pleasure; if evil, grief and sorrow. Again, as the object bears with it the circumstances of difficulty and danger, it may be considered, either as exceeding the natural strength of the power; which implies, in respect of good, an impossibility to be attained, and so it works despair; and in respect of evil, an improbability of being avoided, and so it works fear: or secondly, as not exceeding the strength of the power, or at least, those aids which it calls in; in which regard, good is presented as attainable, and so it works hope; and evil is presented, either as avoidable, if it be future, and it works boldness to break through it; or as requitable, if it be past, and so it works anger, to revenge it. Thus we have the nature and distribution of those several passions which we are to inquire after; of all which, or at least, those which are most natural, and least coincident with one another, I shall in the proceeding of my discourse, observe some things, wherein they conduce to the honor and prejudice of man's nature: But first, I shall speak something of the generality of passions; and what dignities are therein most notable, and the most notable defects.