Chapter 7: Of the Exercise of Passion — Stoical Apathy, Defect, Excess, and the Cure
The next consideration of passions was according to the exercise of their act: which we may consider, either according to the general substance, or according to some particular accidents, in the manner of its being. For the first, it is altogether good, as being nothing else but natural motion, ordained for the perfection or conservation of the creature. For, notwithstanding natural motion may perhaps argue some kind of imperfection in the state of the thing moving; as supposing it some way deprived of that, wherein it should rest itself (which makes Aristotle conclude, that the noblest act of the understanding, knowledge and clear vision, is rather the rest, than the motion of that faculty) yet I say, it always implies more natural perfection in those things to which it belongs: for as fire, the perfectest of elements; and heaven, the perfectest of bodies; so the soul of man, the perfectest of forms, has the most vehement motion.
And in this consideration (so it be always natural motion, governed and dependent on right reason) I find not any corruption, though I find an error and abuse; that I mean, which makes passion in general to be Aegritudo Animi, a sickness and perturbation, and would therefore reduce the mind to a senseless apathy, condemning all life of passion, as waves, which serve only to toss and trouble reason. An opinion, which, while it goes about to give to man an absolute government over himself, leaves scarce any thing in him, which he may command and govern.
For, although there be in the will over the body an Imperium; yet in rigour, this is not so much to be termed command, as employment; the body being rather the instrument, than the servant of the soul, and the power which the will has over it, is not so much the command of a master over his workmen, as of the workman over his tools: the chief subjects to the will, are the affections, in the right governing of which, is manifested its greatest power.
The strength of every thing, is exercised by opposition: we see not the violence of a river, till it meets with a bridge; and the force of the wind shows itself most, when it is most resisted: so the power of the will is most seen, in repairing the breaches, and settling the mutinies, with which untamed affections disquiet the peace of man's nature; since excess and disorder in things otherwise of so great use, requires amendment, not extirpation; and we make straight a crooked thing, we do not break it. And therefore, as he in Tacitus spoke well to Otho, when he was about to kill himself, Majore animo tolerari adversa quam relinqui; that it was more valor to bear, than put off afflictions with courage: so there is more honor, in the having affections subdued, than in having none at all; the business of a wise man, is not to be without them, but to be above them. And therefore our Savior himself sometimes loved, sometimes rejoiced, sometimes wept, sometimes desired, sometimes mourned and grieved; but these were not passions that violently and immoderately troubled him; but he, as he saw fit, did with them trouble himself. His reason excited, directed, moderated, repressed them, according to the rule of perfect, clear, and undisturbed judgment. In which respect, the passions of Christ are by divines called rather Propassions, that is to say, beginnings of passions, than passions themselves; in as much as they never proceeded beyond their due measure, nor transported the mind to indecency or excess; but had both their rising and origin from reason, and also their measure, bounds, continuance limited by reason. The passions of sinful men are many times like the tossings of the sea, which brings up mire and dirt; but the passions of Christ were like the shaking of pure water in a clean vessel, which though it be thereby troubled, yet is it not fouled at all.
The Stoics themselves confessed, that wise men might be affected with sudden perturbations of fear or sorrow, but did not like weak men yield to them, nor sink under them; but were still unshaken in their resolutions and judgments, like Aeneas in Virgil:
Mens immota man[reconstructed: et], lacryma volvuntur inanes.
He wept indeed, but in his stable mind you could no shakings or distempers find.
And therefore indeed, this controversy between the Peripatetics and Stoics, was rather a strife of words, than a difference of judgments, because they did not agree in the subject of the question; the one, making passions to be natural; the other, preternatural, and disorderly motions. For the Peripatetics confessed, that wise men ought to be fixed and immovable in their virtuous resolutions, and not to be at all by hopes or fears deterred or diverted from them: but as a die, to be four-square; and which way ever they be cast, to fall upon a sure and firm bottom. Which is the same with that severe and unmovable constancy of mind in virtue, in defense of which the Stoics banished affections from wise men: not intending thereby to make men like Caeneus in the poet, such as could not be violated with any [reconstructed: force], (for they acknowledge subjection to the first motions of passion) but only to show, that the wisdom of virtue should so compose and consolidate the mind, and settle it in such stability, that it should not at all be bent from the right, by any sensitive perturbations or impulsions. As they then who pull down houses adjoining to temples, do yet suffer that part of them to stand still, which are continued to the temple: so in the demolishing of inordinate passions, we must take heed, that we offer not violence to so much of them, as is contiguous to right reason; to which so long as they are conformable, they are the most vigorous instruments, both for the expression, and improvement, and derivation of virtue on others, of any in man's nature.
Now concerning the accidents or manner of these acts which are from passion, it may be considered either in regard of the quantity and extension, or of the quality and intention of the act. And both these may be considered two manner of ways: for the quantity of passions, we may consider that, as the quantity of bodies, which is either continued or severed; by continued quantity, I understand the manner of a passion's permanence and duration; by severed, I mean the manner of its multiplicity and reiteration; from both which, it has the denomination of good or bad, as the object to which it is carried, has a greater or less relation to the faculty. For some objects are simply, and without any limitation, convenient or noxious; and towards these, may be allowed both a more durable and a more multiplied passion: others are good or evil only, with some circumstances of time, place, person, occasion, or the like; which therefore require both fewer and less habitual motions. The same may be said of the quality of them; wherein they are sometimes too remiss, sometimes again too excessive and exorbitant, according to variety of conditions.
Concerning all these, I shall observe this one general rule: the permanence or vanishing, the multiplicity or rareness, the excess or defect of any passion, is to be grounded on and regulated by the nature only of its object, as it bears reference to such or such a person; but never by the private humor, prejudice, complexion, habit, custom, or other like qualifications of the mind itself. To see a man of a soft and gentle nature overlook some small indignity, without notice or feeling; or to see a man of a hot and eager temper transported with a more extreme and more enduring passion, upon the sense of some greater injury, more notably touching him in his honesty or good name; is not in either of these, any great matter of commendation: because, though the nature of the object did in both warrant the quality of the passion; yet in those persons they both proceeded out of humor and complexion, and not out of serious consideration of the injuries themselves, by which only the passion is to be regulated.
Of these two extremes, the defect is not so commonly seen, as that which is in the excess: and therefore we will here a little observe, what course may be taken for the allaying of this vehemence of our affections, whereby they disturb the quiet, and darken the serenity of man's mind. And this is done, either by opposing contrary passions to contrary; which is Aristotle's rule, who advises, in the bringing of passions from an extreme to a mediocrity, to incline and bend them towards the other extreme, as husbandmen use to do those trees which are crooked; or as dim and weak eyes do see the light best, when it is broken in a shadow: or else it is done, by scattering and distracting of them; and that not only by the power of reason, but sometimes also by a cautious admixture of passions among themselves, thereby interrupting their free current. For, as usually the affections of the mind are bred one of another, (as the powder in the pan of a gun will quickly set on fire that in the barrel) as grief by anger, (Circumspexit [illegible] cum [illegible] â condolescens, He looked on them with anger, being grieved) and fear by love;
Res est, solliciti, plena [reconstructed: Timoris], Amor:
The things to which our heart love bears, are objects of our careful fears.
and desire by fear; as in him of whom Tacitus speaks, [illegible] That to justify his desires, he pretended his fears: So likewise are some passions stopped, or at least bridled and moderated by others; Amor [reconstructed: foras] mittit timorem, Perfect love casts out fear. It [reconstructed: fares] in this, as Plutarch has noted in the hunting of beasts, that they are then easiest taken, when they who hunt them, put on the skins of beasts. As we see, the light and heat of the sun shining upon fire, is apt to discourage it, and to put it out. And this was that which made Saul, when he was possessed with those strong [reconstructed: fits] of melancholy, working in him fury, grief, and horror, to have recourse to such a remedy, as is most forcible for the producing of other passions of a lighter nature; and so by consequence, for expelling those. Thus, as we see in the body military, (as Tacitus has observed) Vnus tumultus est alterius remedium, That one tumult is the cure of another; and in the body natural, some diseases are expelled by others: so likewise in the mind, passions, as they mutually generate, so they mutually weaken each other. It often falls out, that the voluntary admission of one loss, is the prevention of a greater: as when a merchant casts out his ware, to prevent a shipwreck; and in a public fire, men pull down some houses untouched, to prevent the spreading of the flame: Thus is it in the passions of the mind; when any of them are excessive, the way to remit them, is by admitting of some further perturbation from others, and so distracting the forces of the former: Whether the passions we admit, be contrary; as when a dead palsy is cured with a burning fever, and soldiers suppress the fear of death, by the shame of baseness;
[in non-Latin alphabet].
O fearful Grecians, in your minds recount, to what great shame this baseness will amount:
and the hatred of their General, by the love of their country; as Ulysses persuaded Achilles:
[in non-Latin alphabet], [in non-Latin alphabet] [in non-Latin alphabet] Though Agamemnon and his gifts you hate, yet look with pity on the doleful state of all the other Grecians in the camp, who on your name will divine honor stamp, when you this glory shall to them afford, to save them from the rage of Hector's sword.
Or whether they be passions of a different, but not of a repugnant nature; and then the effect is wrought, by revoking some of the spirits, which were otherwise all employed in the service of one passion, to attend on them; and by that means also, by diverting the intention of the mind from one deep channel into many cross and broken streams; as men are wont to stop one flux of blood, by making of another; and to use frictions to the feet, to call away and divert the humors which pain the head.
Which dissipation and scattering of passion, as it is wrought principally by this mutual confounding of them among themselves, so in some particular cases likewise, two other ways; namely, by communion in diverse subjects, and extension on diverse objects. For the first, we see in matter of grief, the mind does receive (as it were) some lightness and comfort, when it finds itself generative to others, and produces sympathy in them: for hereby it is (as it were) disburdened, and cannot but find that easier, to the sustaining whereof, it has the assistance of another's shoulders. And therefore they were good (though common) observations:
Cur[reconstructed: ae] leves loqu[reconstructed: untur], ingentes stupent: And, Ille dolet vere, qui sine teste dolet. Our tongues can lighter cares repeat, when silence swallows up the great: He grieves indeed, who on his friend untestified tears does spend.
That grief commonly is the most heavy, which has fewest vents, by which to diffuse itself: which, I take it, will be one occasion of the heaviness of infernal torment; because there, grief shall not be any whit transient, to work commiseration in any spectator, but altogether immanent and reflexive upon itself.
Thus likewise we see (to instance in that other particular branch, of diffusing the passions upon diverse objects) how the multitude of these, if they be heterogeneous and unsubordinate, does oftentimes remit a passion: for example, in love; I take it, that that man who has a more general love, has a less vehement love; and the spreading of affection, is the weakening of it, (I mean still in things not absolute subordinate; for, a man may love a wife more with children, than without them, because they are the seals and pledges of that love) as a river, when it is cut into many lesser streams, runs weaker and shallower. And this, I conceive, is the reason, why Solomon, when he commends a strong love, gives it but a single object — There is a friend nearer than a brother; one, in whom the rays of this affection, like the sunbeams in a glass, being more united, might withal be the more fervent. I remember not, that I ever read of wonderful love among men, which went beyond couples; which also Aristotle and Plutarch have observed. And therefore we see, in that state there is or should be greater affection, wherein is the least community: conjugal love, as it is most single, so it is usually the strongest; and in the issues and blessings thereof, there is scarce any more powerful epithet to win love, than Vnigenitus, an only Son.
[illegible] He loved me as one loves the only Son of his old age, born to great possession.
Insomuch, that even in God himself (to whom these passions are but by an anthropopathy attributed) that more general love of his providence and preservation, (which is common to all his creatures) is (if I may so speak) of a lower degree, (though not in respect of any intention or remission in his will, but only the effects thereof towards the things themselves) than that more special love of adoption, which he extends only to those, whom he vouchsafes to make one in him, who was Vnigenitus and Dilectus from everlasting.
I do not then (by the way) condemn all strong and united passions; but only I observe how those, which hereby grow exorbitant, and work prejudice to the soul, may by a seasonable distracting of them, be reduced to a wholesome temper: for as it is noted, that among men, those who have bodies most obnoxious to daily maladies, are commonly more secure from any mortal danger, than those who though free from any general distempers, do yet find the surprise of one more violent; so is it with men's passions: Those who have a nature ready, upon sundry occasions to break forth into them, do commonly find them less virulent and morose, than those who have not their passions so voluble, and ready to spread themselves on diverse objects, but exercising their intentions more earnestly upon one.
