cries, and so as to spread over his countenance and over the rest of his body an air capable of agitating others with the same passion, with which he himself is moved. For as men and other animals are united together by eyes and cars, when any one is agitated he necessarily shakes all others that see and hear him, and naturally produces painful feelings in their imaginations, which interest them in his relief. The rest of the spirits rush violently into the heart, the lungs, the liver, and the other vitals, in order to lay all the parts under contribution, and hastily to derive from them as quick as possible the spirits necessary for the preservation of the body in these extraordinary efforts*." Such are the movements excited by the passions in the senses, and all these to a certain degree are necessary for the preservation of our bodies, and are the institutions of our Creator: but three things are necessary to preserve order in these emotions. First they must never be excited in the body without the direction of the will and the reason. Secondly they must always be proportional, I mean, the emotion of fear, for example, must never be except in sight of objects capable of hurting us; the emotion of anger must never be except in sight of an enemy, who actually hath both the will and the power of injuring our well being. And thirdly they must always stop when and where we will they should. When the passions subvert this order they violate three wise institutes of our Creator.

The motions excited by the passions in our senses are not free. An angry man is carried beyond himself in spite of himself. A voluptuous man receives a sensible impression from an exterior object, and in spite of all the dictates of reason throws himself into a flaming fire that consumes him.

The emotions excited by the passions in our senses are not proportional; I mean that a timorous man, for example, turns as pale at the sight of a fanciful as of a real danger; he sometimes fears a phantom and a substance alike. A man, whose God is his belly, feels his appetite as much excited by a dish fatal to his health as by one necessary to support his strength, and to keep him alive.

The emotions excited by the passions in our senses do not obey the orders of our will. The movement is an overflow of spirits, which no reflections can restrain. It is not a gentle fire to give the blood a warmth necessary to its circulation;

* Malebranche, Recherche de la verite l. 5. c. 3.

culation; it is a volcano pouring out its flame all liquid and destructive on every side. It is not a gentle stream, purling in its proper bed, meandering through the fields, and moistening, refreshing and invigorating them as it goes: but it is a rapid flood, breaking down all its banks, carrying every where mire and mud, sweeping away the harvest, subverting hills and trees, and carrying away every thing on all sides that oppose its passage. This is what the passions do in the senses, and do you not conceive, my brethren, that in this second respect they war against the soul?

They war against the soul by the disorders they introduce into that body, which they ought to preserve. They dissipate the spirits, weaken the memory, wear out the brain. Behold those trembling hands, those discoloured eyes, that body bent and bowed down to the ground; these are the effects of violent passions. When the body is in such a state, it is easy to conceive, that the soul suffers with it. The union between the two is so close that the alteration of the one necessarily alters the other. When the capacity of the soul is absorbed by painful sensations, we are incapable of attending to truth. If the spirits, necessary to support us in meditation, be dissipated, we can no longer meditate. If the brain, which must be of a certain consistence to receive impressions of objects, have lost that consistence it can recover it no more.

They war against the soul by disconcerting the whole economy of man, and by making him consider such sensations of pleasure as providence gave him only for the sake of engaging him to preserve his body as a sort of supreme good, worthy of all his care and attention for its own sake. They war against the soul because they reduce it to a state of slavery to the body, over which it ought to rule. Is any thing more unworthy of an immortal soul than to follow no other rule of judging than an agitation of the organs of the body, the heat of the blood, the motion of animal spirits? And doth not this daily happen to a passionate man? A man, who reasons fairly when his senses are tranquil, doth he not reason like an idiot when his senses are agitated? Cool and dispassionate, he thinks, he ought to eat and drink only what is necessary to support his health and his life, at most to receive with thanksgiving such innocent pleasures as religion allows him to enjoy: but when his senses are agitated, his taste becomes dainty, and he thinks he may glut dainty, VOL. V. himself

himself with food, drown himself in wine, and give himself up without reserve to all the excesses of voluptuousness. When his senses were cool and tranquil, he thought it sufficient to oppose precautions of prudence against the designs of an enemy to his injury: but when his senses are agitated, he thinks, he ought to attack him, fall on him, stab him, kill him. When he was cool, he was free, he was a sovereign; but now that his senses are agitated, he is a subject, he is a slave. Base submission! Unworthy slavery! We blush for human nature, when we see it in such bondage. Behold that man, he hath as many virtues, perhaps, more than most men. Examine him on the article of good breeding. He perfectly understands, and scrupulously observes all the laws of it. Examine him on the point of disinterestedness. He abounds in it, and to see the manner in which he gives, you would say, he thought, he increased his fortune by bestowing it in acts of benevolence. Examine him concerning religion. He respects the majesty of it, he always pronounces the name of God with veneration, he never thinks of his works without admiration, or his attributes without reverence and fear. Place this man at a gaming table, put the dice or the cards in his hand, and you will know him no more; he loses all self-possession, he forgets politeness, disinterestedness and religion, he insults his fellow creatures and blasphemes his God. His soul teems with avarice, his body is distorted, his thoughts are troubled, his temper is changed, his countenance turns pale, his eyes sparkle, his mouth foams, his spirits are in a flame, he is another man, no it is not a man, it is a wild beast, it is a devil.

We never give ourselves up thus to our senses without feeling some pleasure, and, what is very dreadful, this plea sure abides in the memory, makes deep traces in the brain, in a word imprints itself on the imagination: and this leads us to our third article, in which we are to consider what the passions do in the imagination.

If the senses were excited to act only by the presence of objects if the soul were agitated only by the action of the senses, one single mean would suffice to guard us from irregular passions; that would be to flee from the object that excites them but the passions produce other disorders, they leave deep impressions on the imagination. When we give ourselves up to the senses, we feel pleasure, this pleasure

strikes

strikes the imagination, and the imagination thus struck with the pleasure it hath found recollects it, and solicits the passionate man to return to objects, that made him so happy.

Thus old men have sometimes miserable remains of a passion, which seems to suppose a certain constitution, and which should seem to be extinct, as the constitution implied is no more: but the recollection that such and such objects had been the cause of such and such pleasures is dear to their souls; they love to remember them, they make them a part of all their conversations, they draw flattering portraits, and by recounting their past pleasures indemnify themselves for the prohibition, under which old age hath laid them. For the same reason it is, that a worldling, who hath plunged himself into all the dissipations of life, find it so difficult to renounce the world when he comes to die. Indeed a body borne down with illness, a nature almost extinct, senses half dead seem improper habitations of love to sensual pleasure: and yet imagination struck with past pleasure tells this skeleton, that the world is amiable, that always when he went into it he enjoyed a real pleasure, and that, on the contrary, always when he performed religious exercises he felt pain; and this lively impression gives such a man a present aversion to religion; it incessantly turns his mind to wards the objects of which death is about to deprive him, so that, without a miracle of grace, he can never look towards the objects of religion with desire and pleasure.

We go further. We affirm, that the disorders of the passions in the imagination far exceed those in the senses; the action of the senses is limited; but that of the imagination is boundless, so that the difference is almost as great as that between finite and infinite, if you will pardon the expression. A man, who actually tastes pleasure in debauchery, feels this pleasure, but he does not persuade himself that he feels it more than he does: but a man, who indulges his fancy, forms most extravagant ideas, for imagination magnifies some objects, creates others, accumulates phantom upon phantom,and fills up a vast space with ideal joys, which have no originals in nature. Hence it comes to pass. that we are more pleased with imaginary ideas, than with the actual enjoyment of what we imagine, because imagination having made boundless promises, it gladdens the soul

U 2

with

with the hope of more to supply the want of what present objects fail of producing.

O deplorable state of man! The littleness of his mind. will not allow him to contemplate any object but that of his passion, while it is present to his senses; it will not allow him then to recollect the motives, the great motives that should impel him to his duty: and when the object is absent, not being able to offer it to his senses, he presents it again to his imagination clothed with new and foreign charms, deceitful ideas of which make up for its absence, and excite in him a love more violent than that of actual possession, when he felt at least the folly and vanity of it. O horrid war of the passions against the soul! Shut the door of your closets against the enchanting object, it will enter with you. Try to get rid of it by traversing plains, and fields, and whole countries; cleave the waves of the sea, fly on the wings of the wind, and try to put between yourself and your enchantress the deep the rolling ocean, she will travel with you, sail with you, every where haunt you, because wherever you go you will carry yourself, and within you, deep in your imagination the bewitching image impressed,

Let us consider, in fine, the passions in the heart, and the disorders they cause there. What can fill the heart of man? A prophet hath answered this question, and hath included all morality in one point, my chief goed is to draw near to God, Psal. Ixxiii, 28. but as God doth not commune with us immediately, while we are in this world, but imparts felicity by means of creatures, he hath given these creatures two characters, which, being well examined by a reasonable man, conduct him to the Creator, but which turn the passionate man aside. On the one hand, creatures render us happy to a certain degree, this is their first character: on the other hand, they leave a void in the soul, which they are incapable of filling, this is their second character. This is the design of God, and this design the passions oppose. Let us hear a reasonable man draw conclusions, and let us observe what opposite conclusions a passionate man draws,

The reasonable man saith, creatures leave a void in my soul, which they are incapable of filling: but what effect should this produce in my heart, and what end had God in setting bounds so strait to that power of making me happy, which he communicated to them? It was to reclaim me to himself, to persuade me that he only can make me happy;