IV
VOLITIONAL HABITS AND THE INDIVIDUALITY
Passions and states of the soul.
Just because the passions are possible volitions and therefore always have a definite content, it is no slight error on the part of writers of treatises, to consider joy and sorrow, enthusiasm and depression, content and discontent, tranquillity and remorse, and other antithetical couples, as passions. These couples are empirical concepts constructed upon the dialectical distinction of freedom and anti-freedom, of good and evil; but the groups of the passions must on the contrary be empirical concepts formed upon the basis of the varying determination of the volitional activity, according to objects, that is to say, in its particular determinations. Thus we can talk of the passion for celebrity, for science, for art, for politics, for riches, for luxury, for women, for the country, for the city, for sport, for fishing, and so on, with infinite subdivisions and complications.
Passions understood as volitional habits.
The distinction usually drawn between the affections, the impulses, the desires on the one hand and the passions on the other, is on the contrary justified, though it always has an empirical character; these being considered, not as the single and instantaneous desire or impulse that prompts to a single action, but as an inclination or habit of wishing and of willing in a certain direction. In this sense, passion would be a generic concept (always empirical), which could be divided (empirically) into the classes of the virtues and vices; for virtue is nothing but the passion or habit of rational actions, and vice the contrary.
Their importance.