SUMMARY.
Means and end.—Moral science should not only point out the end; it should also indicate the means of attaining that end.
There is, as of the body, a culture of the soul: as, in medicine, we distinguish between temperaments, diseases and their treatments, so do we distinguish in morals, characters, passions, and remedies.
Of character.—Character as compared with temperament: four principal types.
Character at different ages: childhood, youth, manhood, and old age.
Passions.—Passions may in one respect be considered as natural affections; but in a moral point of view they should be considered as diseases.
The law of passions considered from this last standpoint. Enumeration and analysis of these various passions.
Culture of the soul, or moral treatment.—On the government of passions.—Bossuet’s advice: not directly to combat the passions, but to turn them off into other channels.
Of the formation of character.—Rules of Malebranche: 1, acts produce habits, and habits produce acts; 2, one can always act against a ruling habit.
How is one habit to be substituted for another?—Aristotle’s rule: To go from one extreme to the other.—Bacon’s rules: 1, to proceed by degrees; 2, to choose for a new virtue two kinds of opportunities: the first when one is best disposed, the second when one is least so; 3, not to trust too much to one’s conversion and distrust opportunities.