The Passions in General

I. Notion. Passion is usually defined: a more vehement motion of the sensitive appetite from the imagination of good or evil, with an unusual transmutation of the body. It is said:

1. Motion, that is, an act, not a faculty or a habit. More vehement is added because although all motions of the sensitive appetite can be called passions, by usage only the more vehement motions are designated by this name.

2. Of the sensitive appetite. Therefore passion is a motion of the appetitive faculty, not of the cognitive faculty, and indeed of the sensitive appetitive faculty, not of the rational faculty or will.

3. From the imagination of good or evil. By these words the mode by which passion is excited is indicated.

4. With an unusual transmutation of the body. By these words the effect of passion is assigned. It is called an unusual or graver transmutation because the graver motions, which alone come under the name of passions, produce graver bodily transmutations (cf. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 22).

Note. Motions of the rational appetite or will are called affections, not passions, because of themselves they do not produce a bodily transmutation, which is a kind of passion.

II. The principle eliciting passion, as follows from the definition, is the sensitive appetite, that is, the faculty which pursues sensible good or flees sensible evil. The sensitive appetite is twofold: concupiscible and irascible. The concupiscible appetite pursues sensible good or flees sensible evil taken simply. The irascible appetite pursues sensible good as arduous, or difficult to attain, or flees sensible evil as arduous, or difficult to avoid (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 23, a. 1).

III. Enumeration of the passions. Eleven are enumerated, namely:

1. On the part of the concupiscible appetite:

a) Love, which is the complacency of the concupiscible appetite in sensible good, abstracting from its absence and presence (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 26, aa. 1 and 2).

b) Desire, which is the motion of the concupiscible appetite tending toward an absent sensible good (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 30, a. 2).

c) Joy, which is the complacency or rest of the concupiscible appetite in an attained sensible good (cf. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 31, a. 1).

Each is clarified by these words of St. Thomas: "The first change of the appetite by the appetible is called love, which is nothing other than complacency in the appetible; and from this complacency there follows motion toward the appetible, which is desire; and finally rest, which is joy" (I-II, q. 26, a. 2).

d) Hatred, which is the motion of the concupiscible appetite by which it turns away from sensible evil, abstracting from its absence and presence (cf. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 30, a. 1).

e) Flight, which is the motion of the concupiscible appetite by which it turns away from an absent sensible evil (cf. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 30, a. 2, ad 3).

f) Sadness, which is the motion of the concupiscible appetite by which it turns away from sensible evil that is present or joined to it (cf. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 35, aa. 1-3).

2. On the part of the irascible appetite:

a) Hope, which is the motion of the irascible appetite by which it tends toward a future sensible good that is arduous and possible to attain. "Concerning the object of hope," says Aquinas, "four conditions are considered. First, indeed, that it be good; and by this hope differs from fear, which concerns evil. Second, that it be future; for hope does not concern a present thing already had, and by this hope differs from joy, which concerns a present good. Third, it is required that it be something arduous, attainable with difficulty; for someone is not said to hope for something minimal which is immediately in his power to have, and by this hope differs from desire, which concerns future good absolutely. Fourth, that that arduous thing be possible to attain; for no one hopes for that which he cannot attain at all" (I-II, q. 40, a. 1).

b) Despair is the motion of the irascible appetite by which it turns away from an arduous sensible good which seems impossible to attain. "Now the object of hope, which is an arduous good, has the character of something attractive insofar as it is considered with the possibility of attaining it; but insofar as it is considered with the impossibility of obtaining it, it has the character of something repulsive; and thus despair regards this object, whence it implies a motion of a certain withdrawal; and for this reason it is contrary to hope, as withdrawal is contrary to approach" (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 40, a. 4).

c) Daring is the motion of the irascible appetite by which it rises up against a terrible sensible evil in order to overcome it. Now daring follows upon hope. For from the fact that someone hopes to overcome the terrible thing threatening him, from this he boldly pursues it (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 45, a. 2).

d) Fear is the motion of the irascible appetite by which it is cast down because of a sensible evil that is arduous, threatening, and scarcely possible to overcome. It is called threatening, for on the one hand it does not concern present evil, but future evil, in which respect it differs from sadness (cf. St. Thomas, I-II, q. 42, a. 3, ad 2); on the other hand, it does not concern a remote and distant future evil: "for because of its distance we imagine this as not going to happen, and therefore we either do not fear it or fear it little. For as the Philosopher says in Rhetoric II, chapter 5, number 1, things very far away are not feared; for all know that they will die, but because it is not near, they care nothing" (St. Thomas, same place, a. 2).

e) Anger is the motion of the irascible appetite by which it seeks vengeance against something harmful, because of harm inflicted. "For whoever is angry seeks to be avenged against someone, and thus the motion of anger tends toward two things: namely, toward the vengeance itself, which it desires and hopes for as a certain good, whence it is also delighted in it; it tends also toward the one against whom it seeks vengeance, as toward something contrary and harmful, which pertains to the character of evil" (St. Thomas, same place).

No passion is opposed to anger. "The Philosopher says in his Rhetoric, book 2, chapter 3, number 1, that becoming mild is opposed to being angry; and this is not a contrary opposite, but a negative or privative one" (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 45, a. 2).

Love is the cause of all passions, for "there is no other passion which does not presuppose some love. The reason for this is that every other passion of the soul implies motion toward something or rest in something. But every motion toward something, or rest in something, proceeds from some connaturality or fittingness, which pertains to the character of love" (I-II, q. 27, a. 4).

IV. Influence on the free.

1. The passions exercise influence on the free will. "According to the order of nature, because of the binding together of the powers of the soul in one essence, and of soul and body in one being of the composite, the higher and lower powers, and also soul and body, mutually influence one another with what abounds in any of them" (St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 26, a. 10).

2. The passions influence the will through the imagination. Namely, this faculty, through the image of sensible good or evil, excites motions in the sensitive appetite; and by presenting the same image to the intellect, it supplies matter to it for presenting the same object to the will. But since the soul according to the sensitive appetite is inclined toward the object or turns away from it, the will too easily freely admits or turns away from that same object.

3. As to the efficacy of this influence, take this: the passions generally do not remove the free, but only lessen it. The reason is that the passions generally do not remove deliberation, but only lessen it (St. Thomas, I-II, q. 77, a. 8; St. Alphonsus, V, III). These matters are developed more where concupiscence and fear are treated in particular.

Note. As we noted in n. 32, in the rational appetite or will there are also, not indeed passions properly so called, but spiritual motions or affections, such as of love, desire, joy, hatred, etc. Now if a similar motion of the sensitive appetite corresponds to a motion of the will, peace is said to be had. If a motion of the sensitive appetite resists a motion of the will, there is conflict, concerning which St. Paul says: "I see another law in my members, resisting the law of my mind."¹ If a motion of the sensitive appetite neither corresponds to nor resists a motion of the will, there is aridity.²

¹ Rom. 7:23.

² Cf. Potters, Compendium Ethicae generalis, numbers 112 and 113.

IV. Practical question. Having set forth the influence of the passions on liberty, we add a sufficiently practical question: namely, whether there is an obligation of positively resisting the passions, or whether it suffices to behave negatively, that is, not to consent. Concerning this, note:

1. Temptation to sin ordinarily proceeds thus:

a) In the imagination there occurs the image of a delectable thing, which is followed by a motion of the sensitive appetite, or a sense of delight. This motion in itself is indifferent.

b) The intellect adverts to the motion, first as delectable, then as moving toward an evil act.

c) The will either positively consents, whether to the evil act or only to the sense of delight; or positively resists the motion; or behaves negatively toward the motion. Positive resistance can be made directly or indirectly: directly, for instance, by attacking the motion either through a contrary act or through an act of simple displeasure; indirectly, for example, by praying, thinking about other things, performing an external work, etc.

2. The question regards all passions, that is, all motions of the sensitive appetite which tend toward an illicit object. Now one who behaves negatively toward sensual motions:

a) Generally sins by not resisting. The reason is that generally there is danger of consenting. Namely, when the soul according to the sensitive part has been moved toward an illicit object, the will easily freely embraces that same object unless the disordered motion is positively resisted.

b) Sins gravely if the sensitive appetite is borne toward an object gravely evil, and, unless it is resisted, the danger of consenting is grave. Otherwise he sins only lightly. Now the danger of consenting is especially grave when the matter concerns a venereal and vehement motion, as will be said more fully in the treatise on chastity (St. Alphonsus, V, 6-9; Homo Apostolicus, tract III, nn. 41, 42, 44). Besides, note that indirect resistance is often practically to be preferred to direct resistance, especially if the motions of the sensitive appetite toward illicit things are lighter, more frequent, or longer-lasting.

Obstacles to Consent.—The obstacles to consent are all those factors that take away or lessen the voluntariness of an act. (a) Thus, the actual obstacles that affect the intellect are reduced to ignorance, spoken of above; those that affect the will are passion and fear, and that which affects the external powers is coercion. (b) The habitual obstacles are habits and abnormal mental states.

Passion is a movement of the sensitive appetite towards its object through love, desire, hope, or its repose therein through delight. It tends towards good, as fear tends away from evil (see 117 sqq.). Passion is an obstacle to consent in the following ways: (a) it takes away voluntariness (i.e., the quality of proceeding from an internal principle with knowledge of the end of the act), whenever it is so intense as to prevent knowledge; (b) it diminishes liberty (i.e., the quality of being perfectly voluntary, or indifferent as between many acts), even when it does not prevent knowledge.

Antecedent passion makes an act more voluntary, since it makes the will tend with greater inclination to its object; but it likewise makes an act less free, since it impedes deliberation and disturbs the power of choice. Example: A man who takes extreme delight in sports, plays voluntarily, but is less free than if he were not so immoderately inclined that way.

Consequent passion which results naturally from an intense act of the will does not increase the voluntariness of the act, since it is not its cause; but it does show that the act of the will is intense, for it is only that which is willed vehemently that overflows from the will and affects the emotions.

(Summa Theologica, I-II, qq. 22-48.)

Having discussed the acts proper to man, we shall now speak of the passions, which are common to both man and beast.

Definition.—The passions—also called the emotions, affections, or sentiments—are acts of desire; but, unlike the acts of the will, they are directed, not to good apprehended by the higher knowing power of the intellect, but to good apprehended by the lower knowing power of sense and imagination. They are defined as: acts or movements of the sensitive appetite which arise from the representation of some good in the sense faculties, and which produce some transformation in the body, such as palpitation of the heart, increased circulation of the blood, paleness, blushing, etc.

Division.—There are two classes of passions; (a) the concupiscible, which have as their object sensible good considered as delightful, or sensible evil considered as unpleasant, and which are love and hatred, desire and flight, delight and sadness; (b) the irascible, which have as their object sensible good or sensible evil considered as difficult to attain or to avoid, and which are hope and despair, boldness and fear, anger.

The concupiscible passions are defined as follows: (a) love, the first of the passions and the cause of all the others, tends to sensible good considered as desirable, abstracting from its presence or absence; while hatred is the aversion from sensible evil considered precisely as unsuitable and abstracting from its presence or absence; (b) desire tends to sensible good that is absent, and flight turns away from sensible evil apprehended as future; (c) delight is the affection produced in the sensitive appetite by the presence and possession of the object desired; (d) sadness is the passion which dejects the soul on account of the presence of an evil.

The irascible passions are explained as follows: (a) hope reaches out towards a future good whose attainment is difficult, but not impossible; despair turns away from a good that seems impossible of attainment; (b) bravery goes out to attack an evil that seems difficult and imminent, but not unconquerable; fear falls back before a future difficulty that seems irresistible; (e) anger is the desire of vengeance for an injury received.

Moral Value of the Passions.—The Stoics held that all the passions are diseases of the soul, and that one is perfect when one arrives at the condition of being passionless or apathetic. Lucretius, on the contrary, taught that all the impulses of passion are good. The truth is that the passions are good or evil according to the way they are considered. (a) Physically, the passions are good, since they are the acts of natural powers, or the perfection and complement of something good in itself. (b) Morally, they are indifferent, if they are viewed in themselves, as the product of the sensitive appetite. For this appetite is an irrational power of the soul, similar to that of the beasts, and acts are not moral unless rational—i.e., an act is good or evil only from its relation to reason. (c) Morally, the passions are good or bad, if commanded by reason and will, for thus they partake of the good or evil that is in the acts from which they proceed, just as the acts of the external members of the body are moral in so far as they execute the commands of the will. The passions are voluntary if commanded by the will, or not forbidden by it. Examples: Our Lord looked about Him with anger, being grieved at the blindness of His enemies who watched Him in the synagogue (Mark, iii. 5); He wept over the destruction of Jerusalem (Luke, xix. 41); He was sad at the approach of His passion (Mark, xiv. 34).

Though the passions are physically good and in their nature morally indifferent, they may have physical reactions or moral consequences that are harmful or evil. These dangers may be physical, mental or moral.

(a) Physical Dangers of the Passions.—It is a well-known fact that there is a close connection between the passions and the nerves, heart, and bodily organism in general, and that strong or persistent emotion can work great detriment to the health, producing disease, unconsciousness, or even death.

(b) Mental Dangers of the Passions.—It is admitted by all that the passions disturb the judgment, and can even take away the use of reason. For they act upon the body or the senses, and these in turn affect the mind in a way similar to what happens in sleep or intoxication. Thus, love makes one blind to the defects of the object of one’s love; fear makes one magnify the evil of what is dreaded; melancholy unbalances the mind, etc.

(c) Moral Dangers of the Passions.—It is likewise a matter of common experience that the passions are a source of many temptations and sins. Often they are antecedent (i.e., not premeditated or willed), as when they arise from bodily states over which one has no control or from imaginations strongly fixed in the mind, and at the same time tend to that which is not according to right reason, rebelling against the law of the mind. Thus, a person whose health is bad is easily dispirited, and this feeling occasions temptations to despair; one whose memory is haunted with the image of a lost parent becomes a prey to sadness, which makes it difficult to perform duties with zest and diligence.

Antecedent or involuntary passions, as well as other involuntary acts of imagination, thought and will, tending to evil, are sometimes called “first motions of the soul,” as distinguished from consequent or voluntary passions and acts, which are known as “second motions of the soul.” The first motions are of two kinds: (a) those that precede all deliberation and consent, actual or virtual (motus primo-primi), and these are free from all sin; (b) those that precede full deliberation and consent, but follow on partial deliberation (motus secundo-primi). These latter are venial sins.

Most theologians since the Council of Trent maintain that the inordinate movements of passion which precede the advertence of reason, such as lust, envy, sloth, etc., are not sins. The Council of Trent defined that the fomes peccati has never been understood by the Church to be truly a sin in the baptized, but has been called sin by St. Paul in the sense that it is from sin and inclines to sin (Council of Trent, fifth session). On the basis of this text some authors argue that it is of faith that the inordinate motions called primo-primi are not sins for the baptized. The condemnation of both the fiftieth proposition of Baius: The evil desires to which reason does not consent, and which man endures unwillingly (invitus), are prohibited by precept; and his fifty-first: Lust, or the law of the members, and evil desires of it, which men suffer unwillingly, are true disobedience of the law; is interpreted as establishing as certain the non-sinfulness of such movements in infidels. (See Merklebach, O.P., Summa Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 448).

St. Thomas taught otherwise that such inordinate movements of passion are venial sins (Summa. Theol. I-II, q. 74, a. 3, ad 2um; de Malo q. 7, a. 6. ad 4m; de Veritate, q. 25, a. 5). Although they precede the deliberation of reason, they attain to the order of moral acts, however imperfectly, insofar as sensuality in man by its nature is made to be subject to reason. Reason can and ought to control these motions, but fails to do so owing to the great number of them possible to occur. Hence they are not involuntary, but indirectly voluntary as sins of omission (II Dist. 24, q. 3, a. 2; de Veritate, q. 25, a. 5; Quodlib. IV, q. 11, a. 1). Since these movements are indirectly voluntary, St. Thomas’ teaching does not conflict with the Council of Trent which speaks of the fomes as habitual dispositions and not of its acts which St. Thomas considers. Clearly, too, his teaching does not fall under the condemnation of the propositions of Baius; with Baius the motions are involuntary, but for St. Thomas indirectly voluntary.

St. Thomas distinguishes the motions of sensuality differently from modern manualists. For him the motions-primo-primi arise from corporal dispositions which are not under the control of reason and hence can not be sins. Motions-secundo-primi arise from some apprehension of the internal senses proper to the passions and can, at least if taken singly, and ought to be ruled by reason. Thus, they are moral acts (de Malo, q. VII, a. 6, ad 8um; II Dist. 24, q. 3, a. 2).

Though the passions are good in themselves, they are often morally dangerous. The regulation of the passions through the virtues of fortitude and temperance will be treated later on, but we shall indicate here some natural means by which, God helping, their first motions may be controlled. (a) Thus, if a passion is not strong, it may be repressed directly by command of the will. Example: The impulse to anger may sometimes be checked by the command of silence. (b) If a passion is strong, it may be combated through other activities which are its opposites or which, through the amount of energy they call for, will diminish proportionately the force of the passion. Examples: In time of fear one can fall back on thoughts of confidence; in time of mourning one can seek joy or alleviation in the society of friends or in the repose of sleep. Study or other strenuous occupation is an excellent means to overcome impetuous passion.

(c) If a passion is persistent, it may be diverted to some lawful object vividly represented and held in the imagination and thoughts. Examples. Those who are inclined to love immoderately the world or the things that are in the world should direct their love to divine goodness. Those who are inclined to be too fearful of men should think how much more God is to be feared.

Habits and Morality.—The importance of habits in man’s moral life is very great. (a) Habits are an index to a man’s past career, for the ease and facility he now possesses through them is the result of many struggles and efforts and difficulties overcome, or of defeats and surrenders and neglected opportunities. (b) Habits constitute a man’s moral character. Morally, a person is the sum of his moral habits and dispositions grouped around the central interest or idea of his life. He who would know himself, therefore, cannot do better than to examine what are his habits, and which is the predominant one among them. (e) Habits are a prophecy of the future. Habits are not irresistible and do not destroy freedom, but they produce such ease and readiness for acting in one particular way that the probabilities are, when habits are strong, that a person will continue to follow them in the future as he has done in the past, thus progressing or deteriorating, as the case may be.

Some Causes That Remove or Diminish Theological Culpability.—(a) Mental derangement or passion (e.g., great fear or anger) may make an injurious act unintentional and so take away natural liability for restitution (see 40 sqq.), but the civil law does not always admit the excuse, and after sentence the offender is bound to pay.

(b) According to some authorities, error about the extent of the harm that is being done, if invincible, excuses from restitution for damage that was not apprehended, as when a thief throws a gem into the ocean, thinking that it is only an imitation gem. But the offender would be held for the entire loss, if sentenced.

(e) Error about the person injured, even though invincible, probably does not excuse from restitution, if the intention was to harm a class (e.g., Sempronius intends to kill Balbus, because the latter is a policeman, but by accident he kills another policeman) or an individual (e.g., Caius intends to kill Titus and by mistake kills Claudius, the twin-brother of Titus).

(d) Error about the thing injured, even though invincible, probably does not excuse from restitution, if the intention was to do damage (e.g., Julius puts poison in a plate in order to kill his neighbor’s dog, but the cat takes the poison and is killed).

Does passion diminish sin? - Passion is here called a movement of the sensitive appetite, as if by a certain force and impetus carrying off the soul, so that the soul seems as if to suffer under its influence. "It must be said that sin essentially consists in an act of free choice, which is the faculty of will and reason. But passion is a movement of the sensitive appetite. Therefore if passion is taken according as it precedes the act of sin, then it is necessary that it diminish sin. For an act is sin insofar as it is voluntary.... And according to this passion lessens sin insofar as it lessens the voluntary. But consequent passion does not diminish sin, but rather increases it, or rather is a sign of its magnitude, insofar namely as it demonstrates the intensity of the will toward the act of sin. And thus it is true that the more someone sins with greater lust or concupiscence, the more he sins." S. Th. 1. 2. q. 79. a. 6; q. 24. a. 3. Cf. preceding n.; L. 1. 5. n. 23.

You will resolve: Hence it follows that sin is diminished the more vehement the antecedent passion is. "It must be said that it belongs to the notion of sin that it be voluntary, but that is called voluntary whose principle is in the agent himself. And therefore the more its principle is increased, the graver the sin also becomes; but the more an exterior principle is increased, the lighter the sin becomes. But passion is a principle extrinsic to the will, while the movement of the will is an intrinsic principle. And therefore the stronger the movement of the will has been toward sinning, the less" [the sin becomes]. S. Th. de Malo, q. 1. a. 11 ad 3.

But an act proceeding from consequent concupiscence is the more voluntary and the greater sin, the greater that concupiscence is. "If under concupiscence is included also the very movement of the will, then where there is greater concupiscence there is greater sin." S. Th. 1. 2. q. 73. a. 6 ad 2.

Does passion totally excuse from sin? - "It must be said that an act which of its genus is evil is totally excused from sin according to this alone, that it is rendered totally involuntary. Hence, if there is such a passion which renders the following act totally involuntary, it totally excuses from sin; otherwise not totally.... Passion sometimes indeed is so great that it totally takes away the use of reason, as is clear in those who become insane because of love or anger. And then, if such passion was voluntary from the beginning, the act is imputed as sin, because it is voluntary in its cause.... But if the cause was not voluntary, but natural, for example when someone from sickness or some cause of this kind falls into such a passion that totally takes away the use of reason, the act is rendered altogether involuntary, and consequently totally excused from sin. But sometimes passion is not so great that it totally interrupts the use of reason; and then reason can exclude the passion by turning to other thoughts, or impede it from attaining its effect, because the members are not applied to the work except through the consent of reason. Hence such a passion does not totally excuse from sin." S. Th. 1. 2. q. 77. a. 7; q. 6. a. 7 ad 3; q. 10. a. 3.

14. “It must be said that the passions of the soul can have themselves to the judgment of reason in two ways: in one way antecedently; and thus, since they cloud the judgment of reason, upon which the moral goodness of the act depends, they diminish the goodness of the act. For it is more praiseworthy that someone do a work of charity from the judgment of reason than from the passion of mercy alone. In another way they have themselves consequently, and this in two ways: in one way by way of overflow, because namely when the higher part of the soul is moved intensely into something, the lower part also follows its motion; and thus passion existing consequently in the sensitive appetite is a sign of a more intense will; and thus it indicates a greater moral goodness. In another way by way of election, when namely man from the judgment of reason chooses to be affected by some passion, so that he may operate more promptly, with the sensitive appetite cooperating; and thus the passion of the soul adds to the goodness of the action.... It must be said that passion tending into evil, preceding the judgment of reason, diminishes sin; but consequent passion in one of the aforesaid ways increases it, or signifies its increase.” St. Thomas, 1. 2. q. 24. a. 3. ad 1. 3. Therefore consequent concupiscence which arises from a merely natural resulting and overflowing of the higher part into the lower, renders, as is clear, that which proceeds from it voluntary, and more voluntary in the cause, the more intense it is, by this very fact that it depends upon the will. But it renders that less voluntary in itself, since it always in some way clouds reason and in some way impedes the free exercise of the will. St. Thomas, On Evil, q. 3. a. 10. But consequent concupiscence directly stirred up for acting, for example if someone deliberately stirs up hatred in himself against an enemy by turning over in his mind injuries received, so that he may desire vengeance more pertinaciously and execute it with greater boldness, renders that which proceeds from it more voluntary simply, because that passion directly and voluntarily stirred up is a sign that the motion of the will is stronger. “But this,” as St. Thomas observes, On Evil q. 3. a. 11., “is not to do good or to sin from passion, but rather to suffer passion from the election of good or evil.”

34. But concerning the passions in particular it is asked: “Whether moral good and evil can be found in the passions of the soul? — It must be said that the passions of the soul can be considered in two ways: in one way, according to themselves; in another way, according as they are subject to the command of reason and will. Therefore, if they are considered according to themselves, namely insofar as they are certain movements of the irrational appetite, thus there is not in them moral good or evil, which depends on reason, as was said above, q. 19. a. 3. But if they are considered according as they are subject to the command of reason and will, thus there is in them moral good or evil. For the sensitive appetite is nearer to reason itself and to the will than are the exterior members, whose movements and acts nevertheless are morally good or evil according as they are voluntary. Whence much more the passions themselves, according as they are voluntary, can be called morally good or evil. But they are called voluntary either from the fact that they are commanded by the will, or from the fact that they are not prohibited by the will,” St. Thomas, 1. 2. q. 24. a. 1, namely when they can and ought to be prohibited. Therefore it is not necessary that the passions always decline from the order of natural reason. Insofar as they are beyond the order of reason, they incline to sin; insofar as they are ordered by reason, they pertain to virtue, St. Thomas, ibid. a. 2. Hence the same Angelic Doctor says in article 3: “If by passions we simply name all movements of the sensitive appetite (and not only disordered movements), thus it pertains to the perfection of the human good that even the passions themselves be moderated by reason. For since man’s good consists in reason as in a root, that good will be more perfect the more it can be derived to the many things which fit man. Whence no one doubts that it pertains to the perfection of moral good that the acts of the exterior members be directed by the rule of reason. Whence, since the sensitive appetite can obey reason, as was said above, q. 17. a. 7, it pertains to the perfection of the moral or human good that even the passions themselves of the soul be regulated by reason. Therefore, just as it is better that man both will the good and do it by an exterior act, so also it pertains to the perfection of moral good that man be moved to good not only according to the will, but also according to the sensitive appetite, according to what is said in Ps. 83:8, My heart and my flesh have exulted in the living God, so that we take heart for the intellective appetite, but flesh for the sensitive appetite.” Therefore, just as exterior acts, so the passions can be considered in two ways: in one way according as they are in the genus of nature, and thus moral good or evil does not pertain to the species of the act or passion; in another way according as they are referred to the genus of morals, namely insofar as they participate something of the voluntary and of the judgment of reason, and in this way moral good and evil pertains to the species of the act or passion. Now, just as it has been said concerning exterior acts that they are good or evil according to themselves from the object, and that they are good or evil from the end, so it must be said concerning the passions. And as exterior acts are good or evil or indifferent from the object, because they bear before themselves something consonant with reason or discordant from it, or holding itself neutrally, as to pray to God and to help the poor man, theft and adultery, to walk and to speak: so in like manner some passions are consonant with reason, and some discordant, and some neutral, as mercy and shame, which is fear of a base thing; envy, which is sadness over another’s good; anger, which can be an appetite for ordered or disordered vengeance. Likewise, as exterior acts are morally good or evil from the end of the will, so also are the passions, as when someone from the judgment of reason chooses to be affected by some passion, so that, with the sensitive appetite cooperating, he may operate more promptly well or badly. And thus passion adds to the moral goodness or malice of the act. St. Thomas, 1. 2. q. 24. a. 4; a. 3 ad 1. — Cf. the little work De Essentia boni malique moralis of Augustus Ferretti, who wrote excellently concerning the essence of morality against modern errors.

99. 1. Notion and division of the passions. (A) In a broad sense, passions are called any affections whatsoever of the soul, even merely internal ones. Among the common people, passion denotes any inordinate or excessive propensity of the will: in which sense avarice is called a passion.¹ Philosophically, passions commonly are called affections of the soul which arise from the sensitive appetite with some organic commotion of the body; thus love, hatred, anger, etc., move not only the sensitive appetite, but also the body; for example, the heart is dilated by joy, contracted by sadness.

¹ Certain modern philosophers make this notion their own, such as Rabier, Psychologie, 6th ed., Paris, 1898, p. 516.

100. Concerning the division of the passions, which by many moderns are also called emotions, philosophers do not agree.

The more common division is that which St. Thomas hands down, after Aristotle. Eleven are distinguished, six of which look to the concupiscible appetite and pursue delight: love and hatred, desire (or concupiscence) and horror or flight, joy and sadness; but five are referred to the irascible appetite, which tend toward arduous good and toward battle against obstacles: hope and despair, daring and fear (or dread), and also anger, to which there is no contrary.

The reason of the division is this: in man, as in animals, there are two kinds of inclinations, by which we are moved toward sensible good, according as it is simply delightful or arduous. By the concupiscible appetite we tend toward good insofar as it is delightful; namely by love we are inclined toward good, abstracting from whether it is present or absent; by desire we pursue good insofar as absent, and by joy we are delighted in present good; on the contrary, by hatred we absolutely turn away from evil, by horror we flee absent evil, and by sadness we grieve over present evil. But when it is a question of sensible arduous good, which we are able to attain only with strenuous effort, by the irascible appetite we pursue it: if the good, although arduous, is possible to obtain, hope arises; if it appears impossible, despair is born; if it is a question of future evil easily to be fled, daring arises; but if it appears difficult to repel, fear creeps in; finally if a present evil pressing for vengeance is present, anger blazes forth.

Bossuet shows brilliantly how all passions proceed from love and are caused from love;¹ St. Thomas and St. Augustine had already gone before him; for the latter says:² "Love longing to have what is loved is cupidity; but having this and enjoying it is gladness; fleeing what is adverse to it is fear; and feeling it if it should happen is sadness."

¹ Bossuet, Connaissance de Dieu et de soi-meme, ch. I, n. 6.

² St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, lib. XIV, c. 7, apud Migne, P.L. XLI, 410.

101. Other divisions have been proposed by moderns, without nevertheless explaining the matter more clearly. Thus Descartes³ lists six original passions: admiration, love, hatred, desire, joy, and gladness. According to Hume,⁴ there are two species of passions: some direct: desire, aversion, sadness, joy, hope, fear, despair, and security; others indirect: pride, humility, ambition, vanity, love, hatred, envy, commiseration, malice, generosity. According to Ribot,⁵ there are five original ones, namely fear, anger, sensitive love (tendresse), love of oneself, sexual love: from which others are derived by a certain evolution.⁶

³ Descartes, Les passions de l'ame, 2nd part.

⁴ Hume, Tr. on human nature, B. II, p. I, sect. I.

⁵ Ribot, La psychologie des sentiments, Introduction.

⁶ Other divisions are set forth apud A. Bain, op. cit., pp. 68-75 and 568-581.

102. (B) In moral matters, a careful distinction must be made between voluntary and non-voluntary passions. (a) They can be voluntary in a diverse degree: directly and in themselves, 1) when they are deliberately excited, 2) when, having arisen spontaneously, they are freely admitted, 3) when they redound from a vehement voluntary affection; - sometimes they are indeed actually voluntary, but only indirectly, as if someone reads a book from mere curiosity, foreseeing that evil thoughts will arise from it; sometimes they are previously voluntary, but not actually, namely because the cause formerly freely posited has been retracted. (b) They are called involuntary when neither formerly nor actually, neither in themselves nor in the cause, were they willed, but they arise spontaneously either from a fortuitous occasion or from a disposition of the body, without deliberation and consent.

According to the manner of speaking of theologians, passions are called antecedent when they precede the will and allure it to the act; consequent, when they are excited by the will itself, and therefore follow the consent of the will.

103. 2. The influence of the passions on a free act.⁷ (A) Antecedent passion indeed increases the intensity of the act, but diminishes the free, and sometimes takes it away.

⁷ Concerning this theologians discuss where they treat of concupiscence; for often by this name they designate all the passions of the concupiscible appetite.

(a) The reason for the first assertion is that, under the influence of passion, we apprehend sensible good more vividly, so that it appears greater than before, and our will is borne toward it with a more vehement propensity, as each one can gather from an attentive consideration of himself.

(b) But from this the free is diminished; for liberty is less the more reason is impeded from deliberating quietly and wisely, and the more the will is inclined toward one part; but the antecedent movement of passion more or less disturbs reason and impedes it from considering opposed motives attentively and perseveringly; it also vehemently solicits the will to consenting, and while it increases the powers for pursuing the proposed good, it diminishes not a little the force of resisting.¹ This indeed is established psychologically from the fact that, when the movement of passion has been calmed, the matter is now perceived by reason in a diverse way, and often the will vehemently grieves concerning the consent given.

¹ Which St. James (I, 14) indicates: "But everyone is tempted by his own concupiscence, drawn away and allured."

(c) Indeed sometimes, although rarely, passion is so vehement that it wholly disturbs the mind and impedes the judgment of reason concerning the morality of the act: then the agent is not properly in possession of himself, but for some time is, as it were, insane. Now where no deliberation is present, the action is not truly free.² Thus especially in those who suffer from hysteria, as will be said below, or who are inflamed by anger vehemently.

² "If concupiscence totally took away cognition, as happens in those who become mad because of concupiscence, it would follow that concupiscence would take away the voluntary." (St. Thomas, Ia IIae, q. 6, a. 7, ad 3.)

Usually, however, passion does not wholly take away the use of reason; and then liberty is only diminished. Wherefore, in practice, if penitents say that they could not resist a vehement passion, they must be asked whether they employed means or not for conquering it, and from all the adjuncts it will be judged whether and to what extent they were free and culpable.

104. (B) Consequent passion, which arises from the command of the will, does not diminish the free, but is a sign of intense volition.

(a) The reason for the former is that the passion was freely willed; for example, if someone deliberately recalls an injury done to him so that from this he may conceive anger, he now freely wills to consent to anger.

(b) Indeed such a manner of acting is a sign of intense volition; for someone excites passion in himself for this reason, that he may attain the intended object more efficaciously and vehemently.

Nevertheless it can happen that, once a vehement passion has been excited, the agent is less in possession of himself and proceeds further than he had previously foreseen, for example, that he kills one whom he wished to wound; in which case the aforesaid passion, insofar as it moves to acts not foreseen nor intended, can be called, as it were, antecedent in relation to those acts.

105. Especially concerning fear. (A) Among the passions which disturb the mind and lessen the powers of the will, fear is deservedly numbered; but in moral matters fear is not only a passion, but also a certain spiritual affection, which is customarily defined as trepidation of mind, by reason of an impending or future danger. It arises indeed from the apprehension of an evil perceived by the intellect, but it affects the will, and indeed in a twofold way: it depresses its powers, and at the same time moves it to flee strenuously the imminent evil;¹ wherefore the will, under the influence of fear, often chooses what otherwise it would not have willed; thus a sailor, from fear of shipwreck, casts into the sea those things which otherwise he would have wished to preserve; a sick man, on account of fear of death, chooses the amputation of an arm, although reluctantly.

¹ A. Bain describes the psychological notion, nature, and effects of fear, Les emotions et la volonte, p. 147-167.

By reason of intensity, fear is grave or light, according as it disturbs the mind much or not. Generally for grave fear two things are required: apprehension of a grave evil, with a truly probable danger of incurring it; for we do not greatly fear evils which are possible, but not probable. Nevertheless, for judging concerning the gravity of fear, attention must also be given to the character of the person; for evils which move one person only lightly can gravely disturb another; whence in moral matters fear absolutely grave is distinguished, which can seriously disturb even a strong and constant man, such as fear of death or exile; and fear relatively grave, which, all circumstances of sex, age, character, etc. being considered,

can gravely disturb the person concerning whom there is question. Hence also reverential fear, by which the indignation of parents or superiors is feared, can sometimes be judged grave from the adjuncts. - By reason of influence on the act, fear is called antecedent when it truly is the cause of the act, which consequently is elicited from fear; or concomitant, which is not the cause of the action but nevertheless coexists with it, so that this is done with fear. Thus a traveler who gives his purse to a robber acts from fear of death; but a robber who despoils a traveler sometimes acts with fear lest he be seized by guards.

106. (B) Concerning the influence of fear on a free act. (a) Fear which is so vehement that it altogether disturbs the use of reason takes away the free. For where there is no deliberation on the part of the intellect, there is no liberty; but he who is so vehemently disturbed acts not deliberately but under the influence of a vivid impression. - Yet this rarely happens; for generally fear does not take away every faculty of deliberating, but only impedes it somewhat.

(b) An act posited from fear, even grave fear, does not take away the free, but ordinarily diminishes it. For one operating from fear deliberately chooses the action as a means for avoiding a greater evil and therefore truly wills what he does, although he retains affection toward the opposite; thus the merchant who, from fear of death, throws goods overboard does this freely, although reluctantly, because he deliberately places life before riches.¹

¹ But when fear excuses from the obligation of observing the law and from sin will be declared below, where we treat concerning Sins, concerning Faith, concerning Contracts, concerning Marriage, etc.

Nevertheless fear diminishes liberty, and indeed the more so the graver it is; for it diminishes the indifference of the will, and moves it toward eliciting what otherwise it would not have chosen. - It is said ordinarily, because sometimes an act begun from grave fear is completed without any repugnance; for example, someone can, from fear of hell, withdraw from an occasion of sin, and afterward altogether freely detest sin.

(c) Light fear, whether in itself or relatively, indeed diminishes the free, but much less than grave fear, since it by no means impedes the use of reason and deliberation; wherefore in the external forum it is not attended to, because a little is reputed as nothing.

107. Concerning the right use of the passions.¹ The passions, considered in themselves, bear nothing dishonorable before them, since they arise from man's sensitive-rational nature, namely from the intimate union of the organic body with the spiritual soul, and moreover were placed in us by the author of nature Himself; in reality they add powers and constancy to human activity, so that a man wholly deprived of these appears, as it were, unarmed, and given over to apathy. Often, however, when they are not rightly ordered, they allure us to sin, against the dictate of reason. Wherefore no less faith than reason commands us to conquer them and subject them to the command of the will: "But they who are Christ's have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences; if we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit."² For since reason excels the body and the sensible appetite, the passions ought to obey reason.

¹ Mystics discuss this matter, such as Schram, Instit. Theologiae mysticae, Paris, 1868, t. I, § 90; and also philosophers, such as Payot, L'education de la volonte, p. 66-108, where he, although a positivist, borrows not a few things from Catholic ascetics; also physicians, such as Descuret, La medecine des passions, 3rd ed., Paris, 1860; and Surbled, La Morale dans ses rapports avec la Medecine, t. III, p. 16-56.

² Galat., V, 24-25.

But the means by which we can rightly order the passions are: (a) immediately and strenuously to turn the mind away from the delightful object which sense or imagination proposes to us, and indeed not only negatively, but also positively, by thinking attentively about an honorable thing and by revolving in the soul those motives of a superior order which dissuade us from dishonorable delights.³ (b) Carefully to abstain from external acts to which passion provokes, and to exercise contrary acts: for since internal acts of the same kind are excited through external acts, he who externally behaves lasciviously indulges lust much more easily than he who cultivates modesty.⁴ (c) To flee external occasions which, from what commonly happens, are accustomed to move the passions;¹ thus the irascible ought to be silent concerning those matters by which they are more easily and vehemently provoked to anger. (d) Finally, the best means is to order the passions to better goods: for since they add powers to the will, the will will profit much if it uses them for pursuing good strenuously. Thus those who are more easily captured by sensible love should turn themselves to Christ, hiding under the Eucharistic species, and sweetly recline in His bosom; let the ambitious promote the glory of God and the salvation of souls with flaming zeal; let the fearful fear not men and their vain judgments, but "Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell";² and thus let them prudently flee occasions of sin; let the daring cultivate fortitude; let envy be turned into noble emulation; sadness into penance, and so concerning the rest.

³ To the point even the agnostic Payot, op. cit., p. 87: "One must even often renounce direct struggle, and for example calm sensual disturbance by getting up, by going out to walk, by going to pay a visit, etc.; in a word, by trying to eliminate the fixed idea, to wear it out, to disturb it, or at least to oblige it to share consciousness with other states introduced thus artificially."

⁴ Payot illustrates this thus, op. cit., p. 80: "A desire, a tendency, are absolutely separated from the external world; they can be satisfied only by muscular acts: anger satisfies itself by insults or blows; love by embraces, kisses, caresses; but our muscles depend in large measure on our will: and since we all can momentarily refuse the ministry of our members to a passion, it is clear that we will be able to develop our power and succeed in burying the emotion within ourselves."

¹ More fully concerning these in the moral part of the treatise concerning Penance, n. 451-469.

² Matt., X, 28. - Cf. Feuchtersleben, Hygiene de l'ame, Paris, 1904, p. 188-247; Senault, op. cit., p. 132-140.

St. Thomas, I-II, q. 9, a. 2, and q. 10, a. 3; q. 22 and q. 23, and q. 24, a. 3, ad 1; q. 73, a. 6; q. 77, a. 6 and 7; q. 78, a. 2 and 4.

90. Passion is a movement of an appetitive power from the imagination of a sensible good or evil, with a certain change of the body; or, an act of the sensitive appetite pursuing sensible good or fleeing sensible evil, under the direction of imagination, with a certain bodily transmutation. It is said to be:

1. We are treating not of bodily passion, but of animal passion: the soul cannot properly suffer per se, but by reason of the composite.

1. a movement or act, as genus; 2) of the sensitive appetite, in order that its subject may be indicated; 3) pursuing good or fleeing evil, in order that the twofold object and the proximate genus may be indicated; 4) under the direction of imagination, that is, of a sensible representation by the help of a certain sensitive faculty, in order that the principle of passion which indicates good and evil may be noted; 5) with a certain bodily alteration, in order that the effect may be indicated by which passion is distinguished both from movements of the will, which take place without bodily transmutation, and from sensible cognition, which takes place with only an intentional transmutation, without physical transmutation.

Passion comprises a twofold element: the material, which is the very transmutation of the body; the formal, on the part of the appetite, which is an act of the soul, without which it would be nothing but bodily passion, by which the body alone would suffer. Thus in anger the material element is the heating of the blood around the heart; the formal is the appetite for vengeance. For passion is from the soul as from an effective principle, from the organism as subject (I, q. 20, a. 1, ad 2).

91. There are eleven principal passions, to which all can be reduced, as the Scholastics teach after Aristotle. For passion is an act of the sensitive appetite. But this is twofold: concupiscible and irascible. For in man, as in animals, there is not only an inclination to pursue the sensible thing which is suitable and to flee what is unsuitable, but also an inclination to resist contrary and impeding things. Whence there is a twofold inclination: the inclination of the concupiscible concerning sensible good and evil taken absolutely as such, namely, concerning the delightful and painful; and the inclination of the irascible concerning sensible good and evil as it is arduous and difficult.

2. This division is not absolutely certain nor scientifically demonstrated; but thus far, says Mercier (Psychologie, n. 121), no better has been discovered.

Now there are six passions in the concupiscible appetite: if the appetite is borne toward good or evil simply, abstracting from whether it is present or absent, there is 1) love of good, and 2) hatred of evil; if the appetite is borne toward absent good or evil, there is 3) desire or concupiscence of good, and 4) flight from evil; if the appetite is borne toward present good or evil, there is 5) delight in good, and 6) sadness over evil.

There are five passions of the irascible appetite, which is borne toward arduous good and evil: if it is borne toward arduous good, either this will be possible to obtain, and then there is 1) hope, or impossible, and there is 2) despair; if it flees arduous evil, either that evil is possible to repel, and there is 3) daring, or impossible, and there is 4) fear; or finally it is concerned with present evil to be avenged, and there is 5) anger, to which no passion is opposed.

The passions of the concupiscible differ in species, both 1) according to the contrariety of good and evil because they are borne toward opposed objects (for example, love and hatred), and 2) according to diverse active power, or diverse degree in the process of appetitive movement toward the same object (for example, love, desire, and delight). Cf. q. 23, a. 1 and 4. The passions of the irascible differ both 1) according to the contrariety of the object (for example, hope and fear), and 2) also according to contrary movement, namely, according to approach and withdrawal with respect to the same object (for example, hope and despair, daring and fear). Anger has no contrary (a. 3).

1. Besides the eleven, there are other less principal passions which have a more determinate and particular object, among which there is considered a quasi-accidental difference (Q. D. De Veritate 26, a. 4). This happens in two ways: 1) according to intensity and remission: thus zeal is intense love, fury intense anger; 2) according to the material difference of good and evil: envy is sadness concerning another's prosperity insofar as it is esteemed one's own evil; mercy is sadness concerning another's adversity insofar as it is esteemed one's own evil.

92. Passion is divided in relation to the free will or to the human act: it is either antecedent, which precedes the deliberation of reason and the free consent of the will and causes it or entices it to the act: then something is done from passion; or consequent, which follows upon the free consent of the will and proceeds from it: then something is done with passion. This occurs a) by redundance, when the will is borne vehemently and intensely toward the object; for such vehemence naturally excites passion in the sensitive appetite: this is voluntary in the cause only; b) by direct excitation, when the will deliberately excites or fosters passion so that it may pursue the object more ardently and intensely, for example, love in order to tend toward something more intensely, hope in order more easily to obtain victory, anger in order more easily to take vengeance, concupiscence in order to pursue more intensely, fear in order to yield at once: this is voluntary in itself.

The will is not moved directly by an antecedent passion of the sensitive appetite, but indirectly and mediately, namely, by means of the object of the intellect. Once passion has been aroused, man is affected in a certain way and changed to some disposition, by which it happens that the intellect apprehends as fitting and good what it would not so have apprehended if passion were absent, just as to an angry or concupiscent person that seems good which does not seem so to one who is quiet (Jas. I, 14). A change of this sort happens in two ways: 1) sometimes, but more rarely, reason is totally bound, so that man does not have the use of reason, as happens in those who because of vehement anger or concupiscence become furious or mad, as through some bodily disturbance: for in these there is not any use of reason, nor consequently of will; 2) more often reason is not totally absorbed by passion, but the judgment of reason remains free as to something, and then the movement of the will also remains free, which does not tend of necessity to that to which passion inclines. And although reason is clouded by passion, nevertheless the judgment of reason remains free as to something, and according to this man can either totally repel passion, or at least hold himself so that he does not follow passion (q. 9, a. 2, and q. 10, a. 3).

93. Principles. I. Antecedent passion diminishes freedom, and consequently goodness or sin, because it diminishes the indifference of judgment and clouds reason, insofar as it shows the object so that it appears very delightful and fitting, or very troublesome or unfitting, and more so than it is. Indeed sometimes, if it is very vehement, it removes the cognition and deliberation of reason and therefore not only freedom but also the voluntary, properly so called. Hence the principle: What is done from passion is less free.

II. Consequent passion in no way diminishes the voluntary or freedom, nor consequently goodness or sin, because it is itself the effect of the free will; but a) it is a sign of a greater voluntary, if it proceeds from the will by redundance; b) if, however, it is directly excited by the will, it also simply increases the voluntary (extensively and intensively), because it makes one pursue good or evil also through passion and more intensely, and will it freely; and consequently it increases goodness or sin: for the more, according to St. Thomas, q. 77, a. 6, someone freely wills to pursue something with a greater inclination, the more perfectly he does good or evil. Hence the principle: What is done deliberately with passion is not less free but more voluntary.

94. Observations.

1. The general doctrine concerning passion is briefly expressed in can. 2206: "Passion, if it was voluntarily and deliberately excited or nourished, rather increases imputability; otherwise it diminishes it more or less according to the diverse heat of the passion; and it altogether removes it, if it precedes and impedes every deliberation of the mind and consent of the will."

2. It can happen that consequent passion diminishes deliberation and liberty as to the act following from it, insofar as the one acting proceeds further than he had previously determined, and, for example, kills him whom he had intended to wound. But as to that new act or further effect it will be antecedent, and the principles concerning antecedent passion are to be applied to it.

72. Notion. Passion can be taken in diverse ways.⁷⁵ For our purpose it is enough to indicate two acceptations:

1. According to Aristotle, passion is a motion of the sensitive appetite arising from the imagination of good or evil with a bodily transmutation. It is called a) motion, that is, act or operation, because in the Aristotelian sense passions are not habits, but commotions or acts, which nevertheless are called passions because they are produced by imagination and bring in bodily disturbances,⁷⁶ as will be said at once. It is called b) of the sensitive appetite, because neither the intellect nor the will properly elicits these acts, but the appetite, either concupiscible or irascible. It is called c) from the imagination of good or evil, because passions arise through some good or evil object vividly represented by the imagination. It is called d) with a bodily transmutation; Aristotle adds: "especially about the heart," because passions are vehement bodily commotions, which are especially felt in the heart: palpitations of the heart, a swifter flow and reflux of the blood, heat or cold, etc. For experience establishes that a man under the influence of passion has most intense bodily commotions. - Passions accepted in this Aristotelian sense are purely sensitive acts (Regungen des sinnlichen Strebevermögens, Gemütsbewegungen, émotions); they are neither good nor evil and are found in every man.⁷⁷ Therefore even in Christ there were passions, who said: "My soul is sorrowful even unto death,"⁷⁸ and of whom the evangelist narrates: "He looked round about with anger."⁷⁹ Passions can be very useful in performing arduous acts; hence the zeal and indignation of Phinees is praised.⁸⁰

2. According to the Stoics, Plato, and the common usage of modern authors, passions are disordered acts or habits of the sensitive appetite. Hence they are called diseases of the soul and entice men to many sins.⁸¹ Such passions would better be called vices;⁸² thus, for example, excessive love of riches is called avarice, excessive inclination to anger is called irascibility.

Concupiscence is taken in a threefold sense: 1. insofar as it is a special passion, namely, desire; 2. insofar as it is the same as passion in general; in this second sense we speak here of concupiscence; 3. insofar as it is the depraved inclination of the appetite (inferior and superior) vitiated by original sin. In this sense St. Paul says: "Sin (original) wrought in me all concupiscence" (Rom. 7:8). St. James (1:14) says: "Every one is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured."

⁷⁵ Cf. S. theol. I-II, q. 22, a. 1.

⁷⁶ Hence St. Augustine (De civ. Dei 9, 4) says: "The motions of the soul which the Greeks call πάθη, but among us some, as Cicero, call disturbances; some, affections or affects; but some, as is held in the Greek, more expressively call passions." Cf. S. theol. I-II, q. 22, a. 2.

⁷⁷ S. theol. I-II, q. 24, a. 1.

⁷⁸ Mark 14:34.

⁷⁹ Mark 3:5.

⁸⁰ Num. 25:7 sqq.

⁸¹ Cf. S. theol. I-II, q. 24, a. 3.

⁸² S. theol. I-II, q. 45, a. 1 ad 1.

73. Divisions. Following Aristotle,⁸³ St. Thomas⁸⁴ distinguishes eleven passions, of which six pertain to the concupiscible appetite and five to the irascible appetite.

Since all the passions are motions, as was said above, they vividly seek or flee either good or evil; and this motion is signified by the small arrows here placed next to each passion.

A few things must be said about each:

⁸³ Ethic. Nicom. l. 2, c. 5.

⁸⁴ S. theol. I-II, q. 23, a. 4.

⁸⁵ By Plato, Aristotle, and the scholastics two powers were distinguished in the sensitive appetite, namely, the concupiscible (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν), whose object is sensible good or evil taken simply; and the irascible (τὸ θυμοειδές), whose object is good or evil insofar as it is arduous. Cf. S. theol. I-II, q. 23, a. 1.

74. 1. Love (insofar as it is a passion, but not insofar as it is an act of the will or a virtue) is the first propensity or inclination toward good according to itself, abstracting from whether it is present or absent; or it is mere complacency in good represented by the imagination. Hence it is briefly defined by the Angelic Doctor⁸⁶ as "complacency in the appetible" (Wohlgefallen). For the appetible effects a threefold immutation in the appetitive power: first, it causes in it a certain complacency of good, which is love itself strictly taken; second, it causes motion toward obtaining this good, which is desire; third, rest in the possessed good, which is joy or delectation.⁸⁷ Love, therefore, is the father of all the other passions, just as the desire for happiness in general is the father of all human acts. Wherefore St. Thomas⁸⁸ says: "From love are caused both desire, and sadness, and delectation, and consequently all the other passions; whence every action which proceeds from any passion whatever also proceeds from love as from a first cause." The passion of love can be concerned with any sensitive good whatever. Thus, for example, there is given love of riches, of carnal delectation, etc. And this passion of love, if it is well ordered, offers to the soul the best and strongest assistance; but if it is disordered, it also produces the worst effects and utterly reduces the soul into servitude. There will be discussion below about the causes of love and its effects in the treatise on charity. Hatred is opposed to love.

⁸⁶ Ibid. q. 26, a. 2.

⁸⁷ S. theol. I-II, q. 25, a. 2 and q. 26, a. 2.

⁸⁸ Ibid. q. 28, a. 6 ad 2.

75. 2. Hatred, insofar as it is a passion, is an aversion from evil, as from something unfitting and harmful (Mißfallen). Hatred is a very vivid passion and is vehemently felt,⁸⁹ and if it is well regulated it assists the soul excellently, because it makes a man abhor every true evil with all his strength; but if this passion is inordinate, it brings forth every wicked crime. For as love is strong as death, so hatred is hard as hell. There will be discussion of depraved hatred when sins against charity and disordered vengeance are treated.

⁸⁹ Ibid. q. 29, a. 3.

76. 3. Desire is a tendency toward absent good. Wherefore it differs both from delectation, which is about present good, and from love, which is about good according to itself, as it abstracts from present or absent.⁹⁰ St. Thomas does not name this passion desire, but concupiscence;⁹¹ modern authors, however, under the name concupiscence are accustomed to understand the whole appetite corrupted through original sin, as has already been said.

⁹⁰ Ibid. q. 30, a. 2.

⁹¹ Ibid. q. 31, a. 3 ad 2.

77. 4. Flight, which is also called horror (Abscheu, Schauder), is aversion and withdrawal from future evil. For example, bodily punishments are imminent for a boy, and he immediately flees them. If someone abhors almost every bodily fatigue and every strong exertion in the exercise of religion and the labors of his state, this flight is an inordinate passion easily inducing the capital sin of sloth or acedia.

78. 5. Delectation (Lust), as it is taken here, is the rest of the appetite in sensible good possessed and present. But rest here is not understood privatively, or as a mere cessation from work, but positively, or as that pleasant sensation which is had if the good loved and desired has finally at some time been obtained. Delectation is not the same as joy, but extends more broadly than it. For delectation is concerned with objects both sensible and spiritual; but joy is rather concerning a spiritual object, and therefore is not found in brutes, which nevertheless are capable of delectation. Indeed delectation and joy can be opposed according to diverse respects. "For sometimes someone feels delectation according to the body, concerning which, however, he does not rejoice according to reason."⁹² The passion of delectation is very easily disfigured by disorder and induces to very many sins; for inordinate sensible delectations are most frequent and most vehement. But well-ordered delectation contributes much both to working strenuously and to bravely overcoming all onrushing evils or at least tolerating them.⁹³ Sadness is opposed to delectation.

⁹² Ibid. I-II, q. 31, a. 3.

⁹³ Ibid. q. 33, a. 4.

79. 6. Sadness (Trauer) is an affection caused in the sensitive appetite from the apprehension of present evil. Therefore the passion of sadness is a certain internal pain and is rarely good, unless it lasts briefly. For sadness lasting a long time is accustomed to have the worst effects: it renders a man, as they say, apathetic and unfit for strenuous labor, it weighs down the soul, impedes the motions of the soul and even, sometimes, the motions of the body, and often harms bodily health.⁹⁴ But if sadness lasts briefly, it is excellent; for it restrains a man from inordinate concupiscence and delectation. -

What St. Thomas discusses about the remedies of sadness⁹⁵ is conformable to experience and worthy of note. The Angelic Doctor assigns as efficacious remedies against sadness: 1) fitting delectations, 2) weeping, sighs, and other outward signs of sadness; for interior pain is diminished when it is poured forth outwardly, 3) the compassion of friends, 4) contemplation of truth, 5) sleep and baths.

These six passions are in the concupiscible appetite; but in the irascible appetite are found five passions, which regard good and evil not simply, but as arduous, which we are able to attain not without strenuous appetite, once difficulties have been overcome.

⁹⁴ Ibid. q. 37, a. 1-4.

⁹⁵ S. theol. q. 38, a. 1-5.

80. 1. Hope is a tendency toward future good, difficult and arduous, yet possible of attainment. St. Thomas⁹⁶ briefly assigns the difference between hope and the other passions: "Concerning the object of hope four conditions are considered: first, indeed, that it be good; for properly speaking there is no hope except concerning good; and through this hope differs from fear, which is concerning evil; second, that it be future; for hope is not concerning a present good already had; and through this hope differs from joy, which is concerning present good; third, it is required that it be something arduous, attainable with difficulty; for one is not said to hope for some very small thing which is at once in his power to have; and through this hope differs from desire⁹⁷ or cupidity, which is concerning future good absolutely; whence it pertains to the concupiscible appetite, but hope to the irascible; fourth, that that arduous thing be possible of attainment; for no one hopes for that which he is altogether unable to attain; and according to this hope differs from desperation." - Hope is ordinarily a good passion, which assists our operations much; for it causes a certain delectation and sharpens our powers.⁹⁸ Desperation is opposed to hope.

⁹⁶ Ibid. q. 40, a. 1.

⁹⁷ Suarez (De passion. disp. 1, sect. 8) thinks that hope and desire do not differ except accidentally; the opinion of St. Thomas is truer.

⁹⁸ S. theol. I-II, q. 40, a. 8.

81. 2. Desperation is a motion of the sensitive appetite withdrawing from an arduous good which appears impossible of attainment. Thus, for example, a sick man, knowing that the illness is incurable, despairs of recovering health. Desperation is a very dangerous passion and causes many evils. There will be discussion below, n. 548, about desperation insofar as it is a sin against the theological virtue of hope. As man can sin by defect, so also by exaggeration of hope. St. Thomas⁹⁹ aptly notes that in youths and in drunkards and others who do not use great deliberation, hope not rarely abounds, because, when difficulties have not been sufficiently considered, they easily judge themselves able to attain what they will.

⁹⁹ Ibid. a. 6.

82. 3. Daring is an act rising up against a terrible evil, present, for the sake of overcoming it. Daring is not indeed a part of hope, but its effect,¹⁰⁰ and it increases and decreases with it. Sometimes daring arises from a bodily disposition; wherefore St. Thomas, citing Aristotle, says:¹⁰¹ "Those who have a small heart according to quantity are more daring; and animals having a large heart according to quantity are timid, because the natural heat cannot warm a large heart as much as a small one.... Those having a blood-filled lung are more daring because of the heat of the heart consequently arising from it.... Lovers of wine are more daring because of the heat of wine."

¹⁰⁰ Ibid. q. 45, a. 2 ad 3.

¹⁰¹ Ibid. a. 3.

83. 4. Fear is a motion of the sensitive appetite following upon the apprehension of a future difficult evil which cannot be resisted; or more briefly: it is the dejection of a mind conquered by the gravity of danger. Fear is accustomed to effect great bodily changes, for example, pallor of the face, trembling of the voice and limbs, erection of the hairs, dryness of the throat, indeed sometimes sudden canities, disturbance of the mind, and death. Several species of fear are assigned, for example, blushing and shame, bashfulness, stupor, etc.¹⁰² Moderate fear is very good and leads to true humility; excessive fear can cause desperation and impedes man from performing great works. Those things which were said above concerning fear in order to its influence upon the voluntary can also be applied to the passion of fear (at least in some measure).

¹⁰² Ibid. q. 41, a. 4.

84. 5. Anger is an appetite of vengeance with a heat of blood around the heart. Anger differs from hatred. For he who hates wills evil to another as such, but an angry man wills evil to another in vengeance for an injury received.¹⁰³ Hatred of neighbor, that is, hatred of enmity, is never licit, since it is directly opposed to the virtue of charity;¹⁰⁴ but anger is sometimes licit, namely, when it is an appetite of just vengeance. Likewise hatred, insofar as it is a passion, can be licit, namely, if it is an ordered aversion from a true harmful evil. - Contemptuous estimation and despising are the principal motives of anger;¹⁰⁵ for a man is accustomed to be very angry when his neighbor knowingly and deliberately offends him, since this arises from contemptuous estimation and despising; on the contrary, he more easily forgives an offense done from inadvertence or from a passing passion. Anger can produce baneful effects in the body and also disturb the soul. On this matter St. Gregory says:¹⁰⁶ "The heart inflamed by the goads of its anger palpitates, the body trembles, the tongue trips itself, the face grows fiery, the eyes are made fierce, and known persons are not recognized at all; with the mouth indeed it forms a cry, but the sense does not know what it is saying." Anger is the most vehement passion, and therefore greatly needs the direction of reason. - Anger does not have an opposed passion as do the other passions enumerated up to this point. For the object of anger is a present arduous evil. Therefore the opposed passion would have to be concerned with a present arduous good. But a present good cannot be arduous, and therefore no passion can be concerned with it.

These are all the passions enumerated by the Angelic Doctor. But if modern authors add other passions, those are either not true passions or are reduced to the eleven enumerated.

Influence of Passions upon the Voluntary

¹⁰³ Ibid. q. 46, a. 6.

¹⁰⁴ Cf. below n. 564.

¹⁰⁵ S. theol. I-II, q. 47, a. 2.

¹⁰⁶ Lib. Moralium 5, 45. - Below in the treatise on the capital vices there will be discussion of anger and its remedies.

85. Preliminary Note. Before the influence of passions upon voluntary acts is determined, it is useful to observe that passions can stand in two ways toward the will and reason: antecedently and consequently.¹⁰⁷ An antecedent passion arises from causes independent of the will, for example, from bodily disposition, from natural heredity, from sudden and unforeseen commotion, etc. But a consequent passion arises in two ways: a) By way of redundance; for when the will vehemently seeks something, motions arise at once in the sensitive appetite; "for the will cannot be moved intensely toward something without some passion being stirred up in the sensitive appetite";¹⁰⁸ for example, saints most intensely loving God have experienced ecstasies and other bodily changes; a bridegroom loving his bride more intensely feels carnal motions. - b) By way of election, when a man deliberately chooses to be affected by some passion, so that he may be able to act more promptly and fervently, the passion itself cooperating. For example, someone wishing to take vengeance upon his enemy first recalls to memory every injury endured, vividly presents to himself joy over the enemy humbled, and, to stimulate the blood more, drinks generous wine; by all these things a vehement passion of anger is produced by way of election. For this way of election there is not always required a positive act of the will, as in the example brought forward, but voluntary permission also suffices, as if a man voluntarily permits, for example, venereal delectation.

¹⁰⁷ S. theol. I-II, q. 24, a. 3 ad 1.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid. q. 77, a. 6.

86. Principle 1. Antecedent passion diminishes the perfect and free voluntary;¹⁰⁹ indeed, if it is so vehement that it takes away the use of reason, it takes away every voluntary.

The reason is that antecedent passion in some measure clouds reason, vehemently impels toward action, and therefore in some measure diminishes the perfect and free voluntary, and consequently also sin. Hence sins which are committed under the influence of passion are (other things being equal) lesser and are customarily called sins of infirmity. - But if passion is so vehement that it absorbs the use of reason, it also destroys the voluntary. For where the use of reason is lacking, the voluntary also is lacking. In practice passion is rarely so vehement that it totally takes away the use of reason, unless, however, it arises from a diseased quality of the body.

¹⁰⁹ As is said more broadly below n. 89, concupiscence or desire of sensitive good does indeed increase the voluntary simply so called (because, assisting and impelling it, the will is borne with greater impetus toward the object), but diminishes the perfect and free voluntary, because it diminishes the indifference of the will. Cf. S. theol. I-II, q. 6, a. 7, and Billuart, De act. hum. diss. 1, a. 8.

87. Principle 2. Consequent passion by way of election increases the voluntary.

The reason is obvious; for the will acting from consequent passion not only wills the act, but also commands the sensitive appetite to assist it in acting by means of the passion. But just as the will is more intense when it produces not only the internal act but also the external act, so also it is in this case.

88. Principle 3. Consequent passion by way of redundance does not indeed increase the voluntary, but is a sign of a more intense will.

The reason is again obvious; for if the act of the will is so vehement that it not only moves the soul but also overflows into the sensitive appetite, this surely shows that the object is sought most intensely.

The Angelic Doctor¹¹⁰ thus embraces the doctrine proposed in these principles: "The passions of the soul can stand in two ways toward the judgment of reason: in one way antecedently; and thus, since they cloud the judgment of reason, upon which the moral goodness of the act depends, they diminish the goodness of the act. For it is more praiseworthy that someone do a work of charity from the judgment of reason than from the passion of mercy alone. In another way they stand consequently, and this in two ways: in one way by way of redundance, because, namely, when the higher part of the soul is moved intensely toward something, the lower part also follows its motion; and thus passion existing consequently in the sensitive appetite is a sign of a more intense will; and thus it indicates a greater moral goodness. In another way by way of election, when, namely, a man from the judgment of reason chooses to be affected by some passion, so that he may act more promptly, the sensitive appetite cooperating; and thus passion of the soul adds to the goodness of the action." - The Code of Canon Law also introduced the same doctrine into canonical practice, establishing in c. 2206 concerning the influence of passion: "Passion, if it was voluntary and deliberately excited or nourished, rather increases the imputability of the action; otherwise it diminishes it more or less according to the diverse heat of the passion; and it entirely takes it away if it precedes and impedes every deliberation of the mind and consent of the will."

¹¹⁰ S. theol. I-II, q. 24, a. 3 ad 1; cf. q. 77, a. 6 and 8.

89. Scholion 1. On antecedent concupiscence. The things which have been said hold good concerning all passions. But concerning concupiscence, insofar as it is a passion of the sensitive appetite pursuing good, and insofar as it is distinguished from a sensitive motion fleeing evil, such as fear, certain special things must be noted. For there is often discussion of concupiscence of the flesh, of concupiscence of the eyes, etc. But the question is only about antecedent concupiscence, since it is plain that consequent concupiscence does nothing with respect to the voluntary or involuntary, because it follows upon the voluntary itself, but is only a sign of an intense voluntary.¹¹¹ But antecedent concupiscence increases the voluntary, yet is accustomed to diminish the free, and consequently also the sin committed from concupiscence. This proposition, considered at first sight, seems to be paradoxical, but nevertheless is most true. For antecedent concupiscence causes the apprehended good to appear greater and the will to seek it more intensely. And this is proved by daily experience. Therefore we see that those who pursue some object with love are borne toward it with greater impetus than if they were not affected by this passion; for example, a man under the influence of carnal concupiscence acts most intensely to satisfy lust. But the freedom of acting is diminished by antecedent concupiscence. For the free voluntary proceeds from an intrinsic principle with cognition of the end placed under indifference. But antecedent concupiscence greatly diminishes this indifference, because it darkens reason by exaggerating the appetibility of the object and by diminishing the evil perhaps joined to the object. Hence this concupiscence as it were gilds things vile in themselves, and everyone is said to be tempted by his own concupiscence, drawn away and allured.¹¹² But since sin essentially consists in an act of free choice and not in the voluntary alone, antecedent concupiscence is accustomed to diminish the sin committed from it.¹¹³

¹¹¹ Billuart, De act. hum. diss. 1, a. 8.

¹¹² James 1:14.

¹¹³ Cf. S. theol. I-II, q. 77, a. 6. Because many authors do not sufficiently distinguish the voluntary from the free, nor the diverse meanings of the word concupiscence, hence disagreements and confusions arise.

90. Scholion 2. On the influence of habits upon the voluntary. The things which have been said up to this point concerning the influence of passions upon the voluntary can be asserted in almost the same way concerning the influence of habits. But a habit, as it is taken here, is a constant inclination, acquired by repeated acts, toward producing similar acts.

a) A voluntary habit, that is, one caused and foreseen from free acts and not yet efficaciously retracted, increases the voluntary and does not diminish the free. The reason is that it offers to the will facility and propensity for acting; but the will freely consents to its influence. Hence good habits produce very good acts, for example, acts of virtues; but bad habits not retracted produce very bad acts; for which reason the Angelic Doctor¹¹⁴ asserts that he who sins from a voluntary habit sins from certain malice. From these things it appears, for example, that the sins of some man blaspheming from an inveterate and never retracted habit are not light from the fact that this man now thinks nothing while uttering blasphemies of this kind. For he freely retains the habit which is the cause of so many sins. Therefore all the sins which actually follow are imputed to him.

b) An involuntary habit, that is, one indeed caused from free acts, but retracted by a sincere act of contrition, diminishes or even takes away the voluntary. It diminishes the voluntary if actual advertence to the act is imperfect; it takes away the voluntary if this advertence is totally removed. And this is plain, for example, in a man who contracted a habit of making himself drunk or of blaspheming. If this man, aided by the grace of God, has elicited an act of true contrition, so that he again is in the state of sanctifying grace and has retracted all his depraved habits, but nevertheless because of the acquired propensity again falls back into the same sins, these sins are less voluntary and consequently less grave; indeed, if they anticipate every advertence of reason, they are only material sins. - It is plain of itself that a habituated or customary sinner is strictly bound to employ efficacious remedies for the extirpation of the depraved habit, as will be explained below in the treatise on penance.

¹¹⁴ Ibid. q. 78, a. 2: "A sin is said to be from certain malice when it is from the election of evil. But that to which one is inclined through his own habit is electable to each one. Therefore a sin which is from habit is from certain malice."

St. Thomas, from q. 26 to q. 48.

§ I

On the passions of the concupiscible appetite.

St. Thomas, from q. 26 to q. 39.

[I. LOVE. — 1° Love, as such, is « complacency in good »³. Understand a firm and robust complacency domineering the appetite; for if it be yet recent and weak, it will rather be the rudiment and beginning of love than love. Or otherwise: ³ Here q. 26, a. 1, o.

« Love is propensity or inclination unto good according to itself, abstracting whether it be present or absent. »

Love is threefold, as appetite is threefold, namely rational or intellective, sensitive or animal, and natural¹. Rational love is inclination unto good apprehended by intellect; sensitive is inclination unto good apprehended by sense, and this alone is passion: natural is the inclination of each nature, whether cognoscitive or not, implanted by the author of nature unto good convenient to it, as of a stone toward the center. ¹ Ibid., a. 1, o.

Love, whether rational or sensitive, is divided into love of friendship and love of concupiscence². Because to love is to will good to someone, the motion of love tends into two things, namely into the good which one wills to someone, whether to himself or to another, and into him to whom he wills good. The first is love of concupiscence, the second love of friendship. Love of friendship is love simply, because what is loved with love of friendship is loved simply and according to itself. Love of concupiscence is love secundum quid, because what is loved with love of concupiscence is not loved simply and according to itself, but is loved for another. Whence, while you love someone because he is useful to you, you love yourself with love of friendship, but him with love of concupiscence; if however you will good to him on account of himself, you love him with love of friendship. ² Ibid., a. 4, o.

2° The principal cause of love is good, because good is the object of love; but the object of love is its moving cause. Another cause of love is cognition, because the object moves not unless known, whence it is said: « Of the unknown there is no desire. » The third cause of love is similitude, according to that Eccli., XII, 19: Every beast loveth its like; whence the common adage: « Like rejoices in like »³. ³ Here q. 27, a. 1, 2 et 3, o.

But similitude is twofold⁴: one actual, while two have the same thing in act, e. g., two men humanity, two walls whiteness; the other potential, while one has power unto the form which the other has in act, as various foods, which through nutrition or assimilation pass into the species of the animal, reduced under its form. The first similitude causes love of friendship. For when two acts are alike in the same form, they are in a certain way one in that form: as two men are one in the species of humanity, and therefore the affection of the one tends into the other as into one [conformed] to itself, and wills him good as to itself. The second similitude causes love of concupiscence, because it makes that he who has only in potency the form which the other has in act, desire it, in whose attainment he delight, if he be sentient and knowing. ⁴ Ibid., a. 3, o.

Per accidens however from similitude hatred is born¹, when namely the like in one is impeding of good or excellence in another; whence he becomes hateful to the other, not qua like, but qua impeding that good. And thence another common adage from the Philosopher, VIII Ethic., c. 1: « The potter hates the potter; » and that Prov., XIII, 10: Among the proud there are always contentions. ¹ Ibid.

To these causes of love can be added sympathy or natural propensity of one unto another, society, familiarity, communication in goods or secrets.

3° The first effect of love is union: whence Dionysius, c. 4 de Divin. nomin., says love to be an uniting force². Union moreover is twofold: one real, whereby the beloved is present to the lover; the other affective, whereby from preceding apprehension someone is affected toward another. The first love causes effectively, because it moves the lover unto seeking the presence of the beloved; yet not so that the beloved be substantially in the lover, for this is impossible, but in every way which is possible and fitting, namely that they be mutually present to each other, converse together, and be joined in other ways beseeming love. ² Here q. 28, a. 1, o.

The second effect of love is adherence³; third, ecstasis⁴; fourth, zeal¹; fifth, injury to the lover²; sixth and most universal, speaking of love as such, inasmuch as it comprehends rational, sensitive and natural [love], is the general influx into all things which the loving one does³: 1° because every agent acts on account of some end. But the end is the beloved good. Therefore every agent, whatsoever it do, acts from some love; 2° because love is lord of the appetite, whose it is to apply unto acting; 3° because love is the root of all other affections and passions which move the animal. But if we speak of the sensitive appetite and as it is passion, it is not the cause of all that the lover does, because certain things he does or can do from election of the will, without passion. ³ Ibid., a. 2, o. ⁴ Ibid., a. 3, o. ¹ Ibid., a. 4, o. ² Ibid., a. 5, o. ³ Ibid., a. 6, o.

To these effects of love the holy Doctor joins four others, namely: liquefaction, fruition, languor and fervor. — All these things, which here we are forced only to note, will be read most usefully in the Angelic Doctor himself, in the places cited.

II. HATRED. — As love is propensity and weight unto good or the fitting, so hatred is aversion from evil or the unfitting⁴. Understand concerning hatred of abomination, whereby someone or something, for instance death, punishment, etc., we abominate and flee as evil; not concerning hatred of enmity, whereby we will evil to someone; for that is not aversion but prosecution of something which we apprehend as good with respect to ourselves and as evil with respect to him whom we hold in hatred of abomination. ⁴ Here q. 29, a. 1, o.

Hatred is born from love, because from the fact that something is loved as fitting, its contrary, as unfitting, is held in hatred⁵. ⁵ Ibid., a. 2, o.

III and IV. DESIRE and FLIGHT. — Desire is the affection of appetite tending unto good absent, whereby it differs from delight, which is of good present, and from love, which is of good according to itself, as it abstracts from present or absent¹. Flight, which is opposed to desire, is aversion and recession from future evil. ¹ Here q. 30, a. 2, o.

V. JOY or delight. — Delight is the rest of appetite in good possessed: if it be rational appetite, it is spiritual delight; if of the sensitive appetite, it is sensible delight, which alone is passion, because it alone is with corporal transmutation². For here the rest of appetite, whether rational or sensitive, ought not to be taken privatively for cessation from every act, as in insensible things, which when they attain their perfection feel it not, and therefore are held to rest through mere cessation of motion: but truly cognitive beings, while they attain their perfection, perceive or know it, and from that knowledge or sense is caused a certain motion of the soul in the good present complacent and resting, and that motion is delight. ² Here q. 31, a. 1, o.

Although intellectual delights in themselves are greater than sensual ones, because they are of nobler object and good more delectable in themselves, and are more firm; nevertheless, as regards us, sensual delights are greater than spiritual ones, partly because sensibles are more known to us than intelligibles, partly because sensual delights are with corporal transmutation, and are desired as certain necessary medicines: whence it happens that more follow sensual delights than spiritual ones.

The causes of delight are³: first, the very operation, for unto delight two things are required, namely attainment of convenient good and knowledge or perception of this attainment, but each is operation; second, motion or mutation and alteration; third, hope of the future; fourth memory of the past; fifth, similitude. ³ Ibid., a. 5, o.

The effects of delight are⁴: 1° dilation of heart, which seems to unfold and diffuse itself; 2° it causes thirst and desire of itself, when namely imperfectly had; 3° it aids the act of reason, when it is itself spiritual, and impedes, nay sometimes absorbs this act, if it be corporeal ¹; ⁴ Here q. 32, a. 1, 2, 3 et 7, o. ¹ « There is a certain delight which is had from the very act of reason, as when someone delights in contemplating or reasoning, and such delight impedes not the use of reason but aids it, because we attend more attentively to that wherein we delight ; attention however aids operation. But corporal delights impede the use of reason for a threefold reason : 1° indeed by reason of distraction, because we attend much to those things in which we delight...; 2° by reason of contrariety; for certain delights most exceeding are against the order of reason...; 3° according to a certain binding, since namely upon corporal delight there follows a certain corporal transmutation, greater even than in other passions, inasmuch as the appetite is affected more vehemently toward the thing present than toward the thing absent. » Here a. 3, o.

4° it perfects the very operation whereby it is perceived.

VI. SORROW. — Sorrow is the affection of appetite caused from apprehension of evil present ². It is clear from what was said of delight, to which it is opposed. Similarly its causes and effects are known from the contrary causes and effects of delight. ² Here qq. 35, 36 et 37

The remedies of sorrow are ³: The first, any delight whatever. The second, tears, sighs, groans, and other exterior signs of sorrow: partly because everything noxious shut up within afflicts more, because the intensification of the soul about it is multiplied more; but when it diffuses unto exterior things, then the intensification of the soul is in a certain way disaggregated unto exterior things, and thus interior grief is diminished: partly because tears and groans are operations fitting to the saddened and grieving, but every fitting operation brings delight. ³ Here q. 38, through five articles.

The third is the conversation of friends, because through this that friends grieve with him who suffers, he perceives himself loved by them; which is delightful. The fourth, for the wise, is contemplation of truth, because in contemplation of truth is greatest delight. The fifth, sleep and bath, whereby while the due state of the body disturbed by grief is restored, the mind is at once with the body refreshed.]

§ II. — On the passions of the irascible appetite.

[I and II. Hope and Desperation. — Hope is the motion of appetite tending unto future good difficult and arduous, possible however of attainment. Desperation, on the contrary, is the motion receding from arduous good impossible of attainment, at least morally ¹. In youths and drunkards and others who use not deliberation, hope abounds, because through inconsiderateness of difficulties they easily judge themselves able to obtain what they will. ¹ Here q. 40.

Audacity is the motion of appetite unto invading and overcoming ². It is said terrible, because light evils are despised. Nor does it stand against that every act of prosecution, such as audacity is, concerns good; for audacity is indeed concerning good, but also concerning evil under the rationale of good. For it is borne into evil to be overcome and put to flight, which victory and putting to flight is good and useful unto obtaining the good which appetite hopes. ² Here q. 45.

IV. Fear. — Fear is the motion of appetite around future evil arduous imminent, unto which resistance can be made only with difficulty; or it is the casting down of mind conquered by gravity of peril ³. The effect of fear is contraction, not only metaphorical whereby the appetite conquered by evil recedes and gathers itself into itself, but proper and corporal, inasmuch as from fear valor and spirits are contracted unto the interior parts, especially unto the heart, not that thence they make onset, as in anger, desire and audacity: as we see in cities that, when citizens fear, they withdraw themselves from exterior places and recur, as much as they can, unto interior and more fortified places, that they may be saved ⁴. ³ Here q. 41. ⁴ Here q. 44, a. 1, o.

From this effect several others are born, namely trembling, pallor, interclusion of voice, erection of hairs, sometimes sudden hoariness, fainting of spirit, stupor, disturbance of mind, thirst, aridity of the jaws, etc.

V. Anger. — Anger is appetite of vindication with fervor of blood around the heart ¹. It differs from hatred of enmity in this, that hatred wills evil to the neighbor as evil to him, but the angry man wills him evil under the rationale of just vindication. ¹ Here qq. 46 et 47.

The principal cause of anger is slight estimation and contempt, which is the greater the greater the excellence of the angry one.

The effects of anger are: 1° delight on account of hope of vindication, which is remedy of injury received; 2° fervor in the heart; 3° disturbance of mind and body; 4° taciturnity, either because the reason disturbed finds nothing worthy of the passion, or because so great is the disturbance that the tongue is impeded from natural use ². ² Here q. 48.

[After human acts and passions, St. Doctor considers the principles of human acts, and first the intrinsic principles, which are powers and habits. But because concerning powers he already spoke in 1a p., q. 77, he treats here only of habits, and first of habits in general, from q. 49 to q. 54. But because what pertains to habits in general are properly philosophical and less necessary, therefore we omit them here. Then he considers habits in particular, and first of good habits, which are virtues; secondly, of evil habits, namely vices and sins. Therefore a few things will be said by us here of virtues, but afterward we shall treat of sins.]

1. A passion is defined to be: A movement of the irrational part of the soul, attended by a notable alteration of the body, on the apprehension of good or evil. The soul is made up of intellect, will, and sensible appetite. The first two are rational, the third irrational: the third is the seat of the passions. In a disembodied spirit, or an angel, there are no senses, no sensible appetite, no passions. The angel, or the departed soul, can love and hate, fear and desire, rejoice and grieve, but these are not passions in the pure spirit, they are acts of intellect and will alone. So man also often loves and hates, and does other acts that are synonymous with corresponding passions, and yet no passion is there. The man is working with his calm reason: his irrational soul is not stirred. To an author, when he is in the humour for it, it is a delight to be writing, but not a passionate delight. The will finds satisfaction in the act: the irrational soul is not affected by it. Or a penitent is sorry for his sin: he sincerely regrets it before God: his will is heartily turned away, and wishes that that sin had never been: at the same time his eye is dry, his features unmoved, not a sigh does he utter, and yet he is truly sorry. It is important to bear these facts in mind: else we shall be continually mistaking for passions what are pure acts of will, or vice versa, misled by the identity of name.

2. The great mark of a passion is its sensible working of itself out upon the body,—what Dr. Bain calls "the diffusive wave of emotion." Without this mark there is no passion, but with it are other mental states besides passions, as we define them. All strong emotion affects the body sensibly, but not all emotions are passions. There are emotions that arise from and appertain to the rational portion of the soul. Such are Surprise, Laughter, Shame.

There is no sense of humour in any but rational beings; and though dogs look ashamed and horses betray curiosity, that is only inasmuch as in these higher animals there is something analogous to what is reason in man. Moreover passions are conversant with good and evil affecting sense, but the objects of such emotions as those just mentioned are not good and evil as such, common parlance notwithstanding, whereby we are said to laugh at a bon mot, or "a good thing."

3. Love is a generic passion, having for its species desire and delight, the contraries of which are abhorrence and pain. Desire is of absent good; abhorrence is of absent evil; delight is in present good; pain is at present evil. The good and the evil which is the object of any passion must be apprehended by sense, or by imagination in a sensible way, whether itself be a thing of sense or not.

4. Desire and abhorrence, delight and pain, are conversant with good and evil simply. But good is often attainable only by an effort, and evil avoidable by an effort. The effort that good costs to attain casts a shade of evil or undesirableness over it: we may shrink from the effort while coveting the good. Again, the fact of evil being at all avoidable is a good thing about such evil. If we call evil black, and good white, avoidable evil will be black just silvering into grey: and arduous good will be white with a cloud on it. And if the white attracts, and the black repels the appetite, it appears that arduous good is somewhat distasteful, to wit, to the faint-hearted; and avoidable, or vincible, evil has its attraction for the man of spirit. About these two objects, good hard of getting and evil hard of avoidance, arise four other passions, hope and despair about the former, fear and daring about the latter. Hope goes out towards a difficult good: despair flies from it, the difficulty here being more repellent than the good is attractive. Fear flies from a threatening evil: while daring goes up to the same, drawn by the likelihood of vanquishing it. Desire and abhorrence, delight and pain, hope and despair, fear and daring, with anger and hatred (of which presently), complete our list of passions.

5. Aristotle and his school of old, called Peripatetics, recommended the moderation of the passions, not their extirpation. The Stoics on the other hand contended that the model man, the sage, should be totally devoid of passions. This celebrated dispute turned largely on the two schools not understanding the same thing by the word passion. Yet not entirely so. There was a residue of real difference, and it came to this. If the sensitive appetite stirs at all, it must stir in one or other of nine ways corresponding to the nine passions which we have enumerated. Such an emotion as Laughter affects the imagination and the sensitive part of man, and of course the body visibly, but it does not stir the sensitive appetite, since it does not prompt to action. To say then that a man has no passions, means that the sensitive appetite never stirs within him, but is wholly dead. But this is impossible, as the Stoic philosopher was fain to confess when he got frightened in a storm at sea. Having no passions cannot in any practical sense mean having no movements of the sensitive appetite, for that will be afoot of its own proper motion independent of reason: but it may mean cherishing no passions, allowing none to arise unresisted, but suppressing their every movement to the utmost that the will can. In that sense it is a very intelligible and practical piece of advice, that the wise man should labour to have no passions. It is the advice embodied in Horace's Nil admirari, Talleyrand's "No zeal," Beaconsfield's "Beware of enthusiasm." It would have man to work like a scientific instrument, calm as a chronometer, regulated by reason alone. This was the Stoic teaching, this the perfection that they inculcated, quite a possible goal to make for, if not to attain. And it is worth a wise man's while to consider, whether he should bend his efforts in this direction or not. The determination here taken and acted upon will elaborate quite a different character of man one way or the other. The effort made as the Stoics direct, would mean no yielding to excitement, no poetry, no high-strung devotion, no rapture, no ecstasy, no ardour of love, no earnest rhetoric spoken or listened to, no mourning, no rejoicing other than the most conventional, to the persistent smothering of whatever is natural and really felt, no tear of pity freely let flow, no touch of noble anger responded to, no scudding before the breeze of indignation,—all this, that reason may keep on the even tenour of her way undisturbed.

6. The fault in this picture is that it is not the picture of a man, but of a spirit. He who being man should try to realize it in himself, would fall short of human perfection. For though the sensitive appetite is distinguished from the will, and the two may clash and come in conflict, yet they are not two wholly independent powers, but the one man is both will and sensitive appetite, and he rarely operates according to one power without the other being brought into corresponding play. There is a similar concomitance of the operations of intellect and imagination. What attracts the sensitive appetite, commonly allures also the affective will, though on advertence the elective will may reject it. On the other hand, a strong affection and election of the will cannot be without the sensitive appetite being stirred, and that so strongly that the motion is notable in the body,—in other words, is a passion. Passion is the natural and in a certain degree the inseparable adjunct of strong volition. To check one is to check the other. Not only is the passion repressed by repressing the volition, but the repression of the passion is also the repression of the volition. A man then who did his best to repress all movements of passion indiscriminately, would lay fetters on his will, lamentable and cruel and impolitic fetters, where his will was bent on any object good and honourable and well-judged.

7. Again, man's will is reached by two channels, from above downwards and from below upwards: it is reached through the reason and through the imagination and senses. By the latter channel it often receives evil impressions, undoubtedly, but not unfrequently by the former also. Reason may be inconsiderate, vain, haughty, mutinous, unduly sceptical. The abuse is no justification for closing either channel. Now the channel of the senses and of the imagination is the wider, and in many cases affords the better passage of the two. The will that is hardly reached by reason, is approached and won by a pathetic sight, a cry of enthusiasm, a threat that sends a tremor through the limbs. Rather I should say the affective will is approached in this way: for it remains with the elective will, on advertence and consultation with reason, to decide whether or not it shall be won to consent. But were it not for the channel of passion, this will could never have been approached at all even by reasons the most cogent. Rhetoric often succeeds, where mere dry logic would have been thrown away. God help vast numbers of the human race, if their wills were approachable only through their reasons! They would indeed be fixtures.

8. Another fact to notice is the liability of reason's gaze to become morbid and as it were inflamed by unremitting exercise. I do not here allude to hard study, but to overcurious scanning of the realities of this life, and the still greater realities and more momentous possibilities of the world to come. There is a sense of the surroundings being too much for us, an alarm and a giddiness, that comes of sober matter-of-fact thought over-much prolonged. Then it happens that one or more undeniable truths are laid hold of, and considered in strong relief and in isolation from the rest: the result is a distorted and partial view of truth as a whole, and therewith the mind is troubled. Here the kindlier passions, judiciously allowed to play, come in to soothe the wound and soreness of pure intellect, too keen in its workings for one who is not yet a pure spirit.

9. Moral good and evil are predicable only of human acts, in the technical sense of the term. (c. i., nn. 2—4, p. 41.) As the passions by definition (c. iv., s. i., n. 1, p. 41) are not human acts, they can never be morally evil of themselves. But they are an occasion of moral evil in this way. They often serve to wake up the slumbering Reason. To that end it is necessary that they should start up of themselves without the call of Reason. This would be no inconvenience, if the instant Reason awoke, and adverted to the tumult and stir of Passion, she could take command of it, and where she saw fit, quell it. But Reason has no such command, except in cases where she has acquired it by years of hard fighting. Passion once afoot holds on her course against the dictate of Reason. True, so long as it remains mere Passion, and Reason is not dragged away by it, no consent of the will given, no voluntary act elicited, still less carried into outward effect,—so long as things remain thus, however Passion may rage, there is no moral evil done. But there is a great temptation, and in great temptation many men fall. The evil is the act of free will, but the pressure on the will is the pressure of Passion. But Passion happily is a young colt amenable to discipline. Where the assaults of Passion are resolutely and piously withstood, and the incentives thereto avoided—unnatural and unnecessary incentives I mean—Passion itself acquires a certain habit of obedience to Reason, which habit is moral virtue. Of that presently.

10. In a man of confirmed habits of moral virtue, Passion starts up indeed independently of Reason, but then Reason ordinarily finds little difficulty in regulating the Passion so aroused. In a certain high and extraordinary condition of human nature, not only has Reason entire mastery over Passion wherever she finds it astir, but Passion cannot stir in the first instance, without Reason calling upon it to do so. In this case the torpor of the will deprecated above (n. 7) is not to be feared, because Reason is so vigorous and so masterful as to be adequate to range everywhere and meet all emergencies without the goad of Passion. This state is called by divines the state of integrity. In it Adam was before he sinned. It was lost at the Fall, and has not been restored by the Redemption. It is not a thing in any way due to human nature: nothing truly natural to man was forfeited by Adam's sin. It is no point of holiness, no guerdon of victory, this state of integrity, but rather a being borne on angel's wings above the battle. But one who has no battle in his own breast against Passion, may yet suffer and bleed and die under exterior persecution: nay, he may, if he wills, let in Passion upon himself, to fear and grieve, when he need not. So did the Second Adam in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Readings.—St. Thos., 1a, q. 81, art. 2, in corp.; id., 1a 2æ, q. 23, art. 1, in corp.; ib., q. 23, art. 2, in corp.; Cicero, Tusc. Disp., iv., cc. 17-26; St. Aug., De Civitate Dei, ix., cc. 4, 5; Ar, Eth., III., v., 3, 4; ib., I., xiii., 15-17; St. Thos., 3a, q. 15, art. 4; id., 1a 2æ, q. 59, art. 5; Plato, Timaeus, 69, B, E: 70, A.

1. Desires are either physical cravings, by moderns called appetites; or physical desires or tastes, called desires proper. The appetites have their beginning in bodily uneasiness. They are felt needs of something required for the animal maintenance of the individual or of the race. The objects of the several appetites are Meat and Drink, Warmth or Coolness, Exercise and Repose, Sleep, Sex. The object of mere appetite is marked by quantity only, not by quality. That is to say, the thing is sought for in the vague, in a certain amount sufficient to supply the want, but not this or that variety of the thing. The cry of a hungry man is, "Give me to eat," if very hungry, "Give me much:" but so far as he is under the mere dominion of appetite he does not crave any particular article of food, vegetable or animal: he wants quantity merely. So of thirst, so of all the appetites, where there is nothing else but appetite present.

2. But if a thirsty man cries for champagne, or a hungry man fancies a venison pasty, there is another element beyond appetite in that demand. On the matter of the physical craving there is stamped the form of a psychical desire. The psychical element prescribes a quality of the objects sought. The thirsty man thus prompted no longer wants drink but wine: the man mewed up within doors no longer calls for exercise, but for a horse or a bicycle. It is obvious that in man the appetites generally pass into the further shape of psychical desire. It is when the appetite is vehement, or the man is one who makes slight study of his animal wants, that pure appetite, sheer physical craving, is best shown. Darius flying before his conqueror is ready to drink at any source, muddy or clear, a drink is all that he wants: it is all that is wanted by St. Paul the first Hermit. But your modern lounger at the clubs, what variety of liquors are excogitated to please his palate!

3. Not all psychical desires are on the matter of appetite; they may be fixed on any good whatsoever of body or of mind. Many psychical desires are not passions at all, but reside exclusively in the superior part of the soul, in the will prompted by the understanding, and do not affect the body in any sensible way. Such for instance is the great desire of happiness. Those desires that are passions are prompted, not by the understanding, but by the imagination or fancy, imaging to itself some particular good, not good in general, for that the understanding contemplates. Fancy paints the picture; or if sense presents it, fancy appropriates and embellishes it: the sensitive appetite fastens upon the representation: the bodily organs sensibly respond; and there is the passion of psychical desire.

4. Physical cravings, or appetites, have limited objects: the objects of psychical desires may be unlimited. A thirsty man thirsts not for an ocean, but for drink quantum sufficit: give him that and the appetite is gone. But the miser covets all the money that he can get: the voluptuary ranges land and sea in search of a new pleasure: the philosopher ever longs for a higher knowledge: the saint is indefatigable in doing good. Whatever a man takes to be an end in itself, not simply a means, that he desires without end or measure. What he desires as a means, he desires under a limitation, so far forth as it makes for the end, so much and no more. As Aristotle says of the processes of art, "the end in view is the limit," [Greek: peras to telos] (cf. c. ii., s. iii., n. 3, p. 15) Whatever is desired as an end in itself, is taken to be a part of happiness, or to represent happiness. Happiness and the object that gives happiness is the one thing that man desires for itself, and desires without end or measure. Unfortunately he is often mistaken in the choice of this object. He often takes for an end what is properly only a means. They "whose god is their belly," have made this mistake in regard of the gratification of appetite. It is not appetite proper that has led to this perversion, but psychical desire, or appetite inflamed by the artificial stimulus of imagination. For one who would be temperate, it is more important to control his imagination than to trouble about his appetite. Appetite exhausts itself, sometimes within the bounds of what is good for the subject, sometimes beyond them, but still within some bounds; but there is no limit to the cravings bred of imagination.

5. By this canon a man may try himself to discover whether or not a favourite amusement is gaining too much upon him. An amusement is properly a means to the end, that a man may come away from it better fitted to do the serious work of his life. Pushed beyond a certain point, the amusement ceases to minister to this end. The wise man drops it at that point. But if one knows not where to stop: or if when stopped in spite of himself, he is restless till he begin again, and never willingly can forego any measure of the diversion that comes within his reach, the means in that case has passed into an end: he is enslaved to that amusement, inasmuch as he will do anything and everything for the sake of it. Thus some men serve pleasure, and other men money.

6. Hence is apparent the folly of supposing that crimes against property are preventible simply by placing it within the power of all members of the community easily to earn an honest livelihood, and therewith the satisfaction of all their natural needs. It is not merely to escape cold and hunger that men turn to burglary or fraudulent dealing: it is more for the gratification of a fancy, the satisfaction of an inordinate desire. Great crimes are not committed "to keep the wolf from the door," but because of the wolf in the heart, the overgrown psychical desire, which is bred in many a well-nourished, warmly clad, comfortably housed, highly educated citizen. There is a sin born of "fulness of bread."

Readings.—St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 30, art. 3, in corp.; ib., q. 30, art. 4, in corp.; Ar., Eth., III., xi., 1-4: Ar., Pol., I., ix., 13; ib., II., vii., 11-13.

N.B.—The division of desires into physical and psychical is first suggested by Plato, who (Rep. 558 D to 559 C) divides them as necessary and unnecessary. Unnecessary desires he treats as evil. What Plato calls a necessary, Aristotle calls a physical, and St. Thomas a natural desire. Unfortunately, Aristotle and St. Thomas had but one word for our English two, physical and natural. Desires that are not physical, not natural nor necessary to man in his animal capacity, may be highly natural and becoming to man as he is a reasonable being, or they may be highly unbecoming. These psychical desires, called by St. Thomas not natural, take in at once the noblest and the basest aspirations of humanity.

1. Delight like desire may be either physical or psychical. All that has been said above of desire under this division applies also to delight, which is the realization of desire. This division does not altogether fall in with that into sensual delights and intellectual delights. A professional wine-taster could hardly be said to find intellectual delight in a bottle of good Champagne, real Veuve-Clicquot: yet certainly his is a psychical delight, no mere unsophisticated gratification of appetite. Sensual delights then are those delights which are founded on the gratification of appetite, whether simple—in which case the delight is physical—or studied and fancy-wrought appetite, the gratification of which is psychical delight. Intellectual delights on the other hand are those that come of the exercise of intellect, not unsupported by imagination, but where appetite enters not at all, or only as a remote adjunct, albeit the delight may turn upon some sight or sound, as of music, or of a fine range of hills. Or the object may be a thing of intellect, pure and removed from sense as far as an object of human contemplation can be, for instance, the first elements of matter, freewill, the immensity of God. The study of such objects yields a purer intellectual delight than that of the preceding. But this is a high ground and a keen upper air, where few can tread and breathe.

2. A man has more complacency in himself upon attaining to some intellectual delight than upon a sensual satisfaction: he is prouder to have solved a problem than to have enjoyed his dinner. Also, he would rather forego the capacity of sensual enjoyment than that of intellectual pleasure; rather lose his sense of taste than his science or his scholarship, if he has any notable amount of either. Again, put sensual delight in one scale, and in the other the intellectual delight of honour, no worthy specimen of a man will purchase the pleasure at the price of honour. The disgrace attaching to certain modes of enjoyment is sufficient to make men shun them, very pleasant though they be to sense. Again, sensual delight is a passing thing, waxing and waning: but intellectual delight is steady, grasped and held firmly as a whole. But sensual delight comes more welcome of the two in this that it removes a pre-existing uneasiness, as hunger, weariness, nervous prostration, thus doing a medicinal office: whereas no such office attaches in the essential nature of things to intellectual delight, as that does not presuppose any uneasiness; and though it may remove uneasiness, the removal is difficult, because the uneasiness itself is an obstacle to the intellectual effort that must be made to derive any intellectual delight. Sensual enjoyment is the cheaper physician, and ailing mortals mostly resort to that door.

3. "I will omit much usual declamation on the dignity and capacity of our nature: the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our constitution; upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others: because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing but in continuance and intensity." (Paley, Moral Philosophy, bk. i., c. vi.)

In opposition to the above it is here laid down that delights do not differ in continuance and intensity, that is, in quantity, alone, but likewise in quality, that is, some are nobler, better, and more becoming a man than others, and therefore preferable on other grounds than those of mere continuance and intensity. I wish to show that the more pleasant pleasure is not always the better pleasure; that even the pleasure which is more durable, and thereby more pleasant in the long run, is not the better of the two simply as carrying the greater cumulus of pleasure. If this is shown, it will follow that pleasure is not identical with good; or that pleasure is not happiness, not the last end of man.

4. Delight comes of activity, not necessarily of change, except so far as activity itself involves change, as it always does in mortal man. Delight sits upon activity, as the bloom upon youth. Bloom is the natural sign of maturity; and the delight that we come to take in doing a thing shows that we are at least beginning to do it well: our activity is approaching perfection. In this sense it is said that delight perfects activity. As the activity, so will be the delight. But the activity will be as the power of which it is an exercise. Powers like in kind will supply like activities, and these again will yield delights alike in kind. There is no difference of quality in such delights, they differ in quantity alone. Thus taste and smell are two senses: the difference between them can hardly be called one of kind: therefore the delights of smelling and of tasting fall under one category. We may exchange so much smell for an equal amount of taste: it is a mere matter of quantity. But between sight and hearing on the one hand, and taste and smell and touch on the other, there is a wider difference, due to the fact that intellect allies itself more readily to the operation of the two former senses.

5. Widest of all differences is that between sense and intellect. To explain this difference in full belongs to Psychology. Enough to say here that the object of sense is always particular, bound up in circumstances of present time and place, as this horse: while the object of intellect is universal, as horse simply. The human intellect never works without the concurrence either of sense or of imagination, which is as it were sense at second hand. As pure intellectual operation is never found in man, so neither is pure intellectual delight, like that of an angel. Still, as even in man sense and intellect are two powers differing in kind, so must their operations differ in kind, and the delights consequent upon those operations. Therefore, unless Paley would have been willing to allow that the rational and animal parts of our nature differ only as more and less—which is tantamount to avowing that man is but a magnified brute—he ought not to have penned his celebrated utterance, that pleasures differ only in continuance and intensity: he should have admitted that they differ likewise in kind; or in other words, that pleasures differ in quality as well as in quantity. The goodness of a pleasure, then, is not the mere amount of it. To repeat St. Augustine's reflection on the drunken Milanese: "It makes a difference what source a man draws his delight from."² As in man reason is nobler than sense, preferable, and a better good to its possessor—for reason it is that makes him man and raises him above the brute—so the use of the reason and the delight that comes thereof is nobler, preferable, and a better good to him than the pleasure that is of the mere operation of his animal nature. A little of the nobler delight outweighs a vast volume of the baser: not that the nobler is the pleasanter, but because it is the nobler. Nor can it be pretended that the nobler prevails as being the more durable, and thereby likely to prove the pleasanter in the long run. The nobler is better at the time and in itself, because it is the more human delight and characteristic of the higher species. I have but to add that what is better in itself is not better under all circumstances. The best life of man can only be lived at intervals. The lower operations and the delights that go with them have a medicinal power to restore the vigour that has become enfeebled by a lengthened exercise of the higher faculties. At those "dead points" food and fiddling are better than philosophy.

² Interest unde quis gaudeat. (S. Aug., Confess., vi., 6.)

6. This medicinal or restorative virtue of delight is a fact to bear in mind in debating the question how far it is right to act for the pleasure that the action gives. It is certainly wrong to act for mere animal gratification. Such gratification is a stimulus to us to do that which makes for the well-being of our nature: to fling away all intention of any good other than the delight of the action, is to mistake the incentive for the end proposed. But this is a doctrine easily misunderstood. An example may save it from being construed too rigidly. Suppose a man has a vinery, and being fond of fruit he goes there occasionally, and eats, not for hunger, but as he says, because he likes grapes. He seems to act for mere pleasure: yet who shall be stern enough to condemn him, so that he exceed not in quantity? If he returns from the vinery in a more amiable and charitable mood, more satisfied with Providence, more apt to converse with men and do his work in the commonwealth, who can deny that in acting in view of these ends, at least implicitly, he has taken lawful means to a proper purpose? He has not been fed, but recreated: he has not taken nourishment, but medicine, preventive or remedial, to a mind diseased. It is no doubt a sweet and agreeable medicine: this very agreeableness makes its medical virtue. It is a sweet antidote to the bitterness of life. But though a man may live by medicine, he does not live for it. So no man by rights lives for pleasure. The pleasure that a man finds in his work encourages him to go on with it. The pleasure that a man finds by turning aside to what is not work, picks him up, rests and renovates him, that he may go forth as from a wayside inn, or diverticulum, refreshed to resume the road of labour. Hence we gather the solution of the question as to the lawfulness of acting for pleasure. If a man does a thing because it is pleasant, and takes the pleasure as an incentive to carry on his labour, or as a remedy to enable him to resume it, he acts for pleasure rightly. For this it is not necessary that he should expressly think of the pleasure as being helpful to labour: it is enough that he accepts the subordination of pleasure to work as nature has ordained it; and this ordinance he does accept, if he puts forth no positive volition the other way, whether expressly, as none but a wrong-headed theologian is likely to do, or virtually, by taking his pleasure with such greediness that the motion of his will is all spent therein as in its last end and terminus, so that the pleasure ceases to be referable to aught beyond itself, a case of much easier occurrence. Or lastly, the natural subordination of pleasure to work may be set aside, defeated, and rendered impossible by the whole tenour of an individual's life, if he be one of those giddy butterflies who flit from pleasure to pleasure and do no work at all. Till late in the morning he sleeps, then breakfasts, then he shoots, lunches, rides, bathes, dines, listens to music, smokes, and reads fiction till late at night, then sleeps again; and this, or the like of this is his day, some three hundred days at least in the year. This is not mere acting for pleasure, it is living for pleasure, or acting for pleasure so continuously as to leave no scope for any further end of life. It may be hard to indicate the precise hour in which this man's pleasure-seeking passes into sin: still this is clear, his life is not innocent. Clear him of gluttony and lust, there remains upon him the sin of sloth and of a wasted existence.

7. Even the very highest of delights, the delight of contemplation, is not the highest of goods, but a concomitant of the highest good. The highest good is the final object of the will: but the object of the will is not the will's own act: we do not will willing, as neither do we understand understanding, not at least without a reflex effort. What we will in contemplating is, not to be delighted, but to see. This is the subjective end and happiness of man, to see, to contemplate. Delight is not anything objective: neither is it the subjective last end of humanity. In no sense then is delight, or pleasure, the highest good.

Readings.—Ar., Eth., X., iv., 8; ib., X., iii., 8-13, ib., X., v., 1-5; Plato, Gorgias, pp. 494, 495; Mill, Utilitarianism, 2nd. edit., pp. 11-l6; St. Thos., la 2æ, q. 31, art. 5; id., Contra Gentiles, iii., 26, nn. 8, 10, 11, 12.

1. Anger is a compound passion, made up of displeasure, desire, and hope: displeasure at a slight received, desire of revenge and satisfaction, and hope of getting the same, the getting of it being a matter of some difficulty and calling for some exertion, for we are not angry with one who lies wholly in our power, or whom we despise. Anger then is conversant at once with the good of vengeance and with the evil of a slight received: the good being somewhat difficult to compass, and the evil not altogether easy to wipe out. (Cf. s.i., n.4, p. 43.)

2. Anger is defined: A desire of open vengeance for an open slight, attended with displeasure at the same, the slight being put upon self, or upon some dear one, unbefittingly. The vengeance that the angry man craves is a vengeance that all shall see. "No, ye unnatural hags," cries Lear in his fury, "I will do such things,—what they shall be yet I know not, but they shall be the terror of the earth." When we are angry, we talk of "making an example" of the offender. The idea is that, as all the world has seen us slighted and set at naught, so all the world, witnessing the punishment of the offending party, may take to heart the lesson which we are enforcing upon him, namely, that we are men of might and importance whom none should despise. Whoever is angry, is angry at being despised, flouted to his face and set at naught, either in his own person, or in the person of one whom he venerates and loves, or in some cause that lies near to his heart. Anger is essentially a craving for vengeance on account of a wrong done. If then we have suffered, but think we deserve to suffer, we are not angry. If we have suffered wrong, but the wrong seems to have been done in ignorance, or in the heat of passion, we are not angry, or we are not so very angry. "If he had known what he was about," we say, or, "if he had been in his right mind, he could not have brought himself to treat me so." But when one has done us cool and deliberate wrong, then we are angry, because the slight is most considerable. There is an appearance of our claims to considerations having been weighed, and found wanting. We call it, "a cool piece of impertinence," "spiteful malevolence," and the like. Any other motive to which the wrong is traceable on the part of the wrong-doer, lessens our anger against him: but the motive of contempt, and that alone, if we seem to discover it in him, invariably increases it. To this all other points are reducible that move our anger, as forgetfulness, rudely delivered tidings of misfortune, a face of mirth looking on at our distress, or getting in the way and thwarting our purpose.

3. Anger differs from hatred. Hatred is a chronic affection, anger an acute one. Hatred wishes evil to a man as it is evil, anger as it is just. Anger wishes evil to fall on its object in the sight of all men, and with the full consciousness of the sufferer: hatred is satisfied with even a secret mischief, and, so that the evil be a grievous one, does not much mind whether the sufferer be conscious of it or no. Thus an angry man may wish to see him who has offended brought to public confession and shame: but a hater is well content to see his enemy spending his fortune foolishly, or dead drunk in a ditch on a lonely wayside. The man in anger feels grief and annoyance, not so the hater. At a certain point of suffering anger stops, and is appeased when full satisfaction seems to have been made: but an enemy is implacable and insatiate in his desire of your harm. St. Augustine in his Rule to his brethren says: "For quarrels, either have them not, or end them with all speed, lest anger grow to hatred, and of a mote make a beam."

4. Anger, like vengeance, is then only a safe course to enter on, when it proceeds not upon personal but upon public grounds. And even by this maxim many deceive themselves.

Readings.—Ar., Rhet., ii., 2; ib., 4, ad fin.; St. Thos., 1a 2æ, q. 46, art. 2, in corp.; ib., q. 46, art. 3, in corp.; ib., q. 46, art. 6; ib., q. 47, art. 2.

68. We have just explained how the passions of concupiscence and fear may affect our responsibility. It will be useful at this stage to consider the passions in general, the various kinds, the nature of each, the purpose for which they exist, and the use we should make of them.

Passions are movements of the irrational part of the soul attended by a notable alteration of the body, on the apprehension of good or evil. In the strict meaning of the word, passions are organic affections aroused by sensible good or evil. As such, they are common to man and brute, but impossible in an angel. Nevertheless, the names of various passions are often used analogically to denote affections of the will, that are entirely, or at least chiefly, due to intellectual cognition, as when we are said to love science, to hate ignorance, to desire honor, to enjoy a joke, etc. To this latter class belong the moral emotions, such as admiration of virtue, detestation of vice, etc. Owing, indeed, to the substantial union of our soul and body, the one cannot be strongly affected without, as a general rule, reacting on the other. For both sensitive and intellectual knowledge are accompanied with phantasms, by means of which the sensitive and, indirectly, the rational appetites are aroused to action. Besides, in man there is really only one will; which is called affective to denote the impulse of the sense-faculty, and elective to denote the free choice of the rational faculty, and it scarcely ever acts powerfully in either faculty without acting also in the other.

69. Our passions are of two kinds, concupiscible and irascible.

1. The concupiscible passions are those affections of the sensible faculties which regard their object as simply good or evil. They are six in number: good or evil in general excites love or hate respectively; desire is roused by good apprehended as absent, aversion by an approaching evil; when the good is attained, joy is excited, whilst, on the other hand, present evil causes sadness.

2. The irascible passions, which are five in number, arise when good or evil is apprehended as associated with difficulties or obstacles to be overcome. Difficulty or even danger in connection with a desired good is not always displeasing. If the attainment of a desired good which is difficult to acquire is apprehended as within our power, hope is aroused; if it seems to be quite beyond our reach, despondency follows. In the case of a coming evil, we are animated by courage if we feel that we can avert it, but we experience fear on perceiving that we cannot easily escape. Anger is roused by the presence of an evil to which we are unwilling to submit (St. Thomas, 1ma 2æ, q. 23). These eleven may be called the primary passions. All others are modifications or combinations of these.

70. The passions are intended by the Creator to assist us in attaining our last end. Hence in themselves they are not evil, but good. Yet they must be subject to the careful control of the will enlightened by reason. Generally their first impulses arise by a kind of physical necessity when the senses apprehend good or evil. However, as these first impulses are not free, they are not imputable to us. But as soon as the intellect perceives their presence, the will can act; and it must assert its control to regulate or suppress their movement, according as reason judges it to be right or wrong. If the will fails to do this, we become accountable for the consequences. The moral perfection of a man consists, to a great extent, in his power to control his passions and to direct their energies aright. Persevering efforts thus to regulate the passions beget good habits, which are invaluable aids for attaining our last end.

71. Zeno and the Stoics totally misconceived the relation of the passions to morality; they pronounced them to be moral disorders, which a virtuous man was bound to uproot from his heart. He was not to allow the sensitive appetite even to stir. Now, it is impossible to suppress all movement of passion; indeed, to check passion when it is conducive to true happiness, would be very unwise. It would make all impassioned eloquence and poetry impossible; it would cut off all high-spirited devotion to duty, all unselfish spontaneity, and banish generous pity and noble enthusiasm. The ideal of human nature fancied by the Stoics would be a mere calculating machine. A man's father and mother might be slain before his eyes, whilst he would be busy stifling his heart's natural impulse to fly to the rescue. The true doctrine which we have here outlined was formulated by Aristotle and his followers, the Peripatetics; but in its stead the Stoics attempted to substitute their strange misconceptions of the truth.