175. Passions.—Character, considered from a strictly philosophical standpoint, is nothing more than the various combinations which the passions, whether natural or acquired, which exist in man, form in each individual, so that there is, in some respect, double reason for treating these two subjects separately. But, in the first place, the divers movements of the soul take, by usage, the name of passions, only when they reach a certain degree of acuteness, and, as Bacon puts it, of disease. In the second, passions are the elements which in divers quantities and proportions compose what is termed character; it is from this double point of view that we must speak of them separately.
If we consider the passions from a psychological[153] standpoint, we shall find that they are nothing more than the natural inclinations of the human heart.
We have to consider them here especially from a pathological point of view (if it may be permitted to say so), that is, as diseases of the human heart.
The character of passions regarded as diseases, is the following:
1. They are exclusive. A man who has become enslaved by a passion, will know nothing else, will listen to nothing else; he will sacrifice to that passion not only his reason and his duty, but his other inclinations, and even his other passions also. The passion of gambling or of drinking will stifle all the rest, ambition, love, even the instinct of self-preservation.
2. Passion, as a disease, is in a violent condition; it is impetuous, disordered, very like insanity.
3. Although there may be fits of passion, sudden and fleeting, which rise and fall again in the same instant, we generally give the name of passions only to movements which have become habitual. Passions then are habits; applied to things base, they become vices.
4. There is a diagnosis[154] of passions as there is of diseases. They betray themselves outwardly by external signs which are their symptoms (acts, gestures, physiognomy), and inwardly, by first indications or what was formerly called prodromes, which are their forerunners (disturbance, agitation, etc.).
5. Passion, like disease, has its history: it has its regular course, its crisis, and termination. The Imitation of Jesus Christ gives in a few words the history of a passion: “In the beginning a simple thought presents itself to the mind; this is followed by a vivid fancy; then comes delectation, a bad impulse, and finally the consent. Thus does the evil one gradually enter the soul.”[155]
6. It is rare that a passion arises and develops without obstacles and resistance. Hence that state we have called fluctuation (Vol. I., p. 167), and which has so often been compared to the ebb and flow of the sea.