the grief we have of seeing ones self unjustly slighted besides that Beasts are not touched with scorn who nevertheless are susceptible of this Passion there are a thousand encounters wherein we may be provoked to Anger without having cause to believe we have been slighted as when we are angry with our selves or against insensible things If instead of this slighting you put Injury the same difficulty remains entire since it 's very probable that Beasts know not injustice nor consequently Injury and that there are many things which make us angry at which we cannot justly be offended Add also that a man may have the grief to see himself offended and the desire of being revenged without being angry for the motion of Grief and that of Desire which belongs to the Concupiscible Appetite seem not as if they should enter into the essence of this Passion besides they should tell us what Vengeance is and why we desire it for if to revenge ones self be nothing but to retort the ill on him who afflicted it causing him to suffer the same pains There is no likelihood that a man should be angry with himself or insensible things seeing no man would be revenged on himself and that it is impossible and useless against those things that are without sence To say likewise that it 's a rising in the Soul whereby she overcomes those difficulties which traverse her designs This definition would be too general seeing it befits also Boldness and that therein the Soul may raise it self without being moved by Anger for I mind not those who say that this rising up is not an Appetite since it 's a received maxime That all motion of the Appetitive part is called the Appetite To conclude the worst of all those is that which raiseth it to an ebullition or fixing the blood about the heart for it it not therein that the essence of Anger consists that is only its effect it being certain that all Passions are impermanent actions which are formed in the Soul before she agitates the Body and principally the humors which are no parts of it These are the difficulties which are entertained in common opinion the method which we hold and the principles which we have established render not the thing the more easie For after having shewed that the Soul which will not flye before the enemy hath but two courses to take to wit Resistance and Assault which are Constancy and Boldness it seems as if we had exhausted all the springs whence Anger might proceed as if we were obliged to confound it with one or other of these two Passions Indeed it raiseth it self up against ill it assaults it it would overcome it even as Boldness so that they seem both to have but the same object the same motive and the same motion and therefore to be but one Passion since these three things which make the difference of all the esmotions of the Soul render them equal and every way alike Yet since it 's undoubted that they are different and that by experience we know there are ills which move Boldness and not Anger that this is more impetuous and turbulent then the other and that there are many persons which are cholerick as Children Women and those that are sick which we cannot call Bold there must necessarily be some circumstances and some conditions in their causes which must make the difference let 's first therefore examine the matter and the object of this Passion and consider whether it be truly the same which raiseth Boldness In the former Discourse we have shewn What ill is Anger 's object That the word Ill did not onely signifie the effect which properly is ill but also the cause which produceth it And this distinction is so necessary for the knowledge of the Passions that there are some which have no other object but the ill it self as Grief others which consider onely the cause as Anger Hope and Despair Lastly others which confound them together as Boldness Hatred Aversion and Fear Now Anger assaults nothing but the cause onely of ill for a man cannot be angry with an injury which he may have received but with him who did it Quite contrary Boldness looks on the danger without often considering whence it happens But as there are causes which produce ill without knowledge as others which effect it without design if we considerately examine those which Anger assaults we shall always finde them agitating with design for we are not provoked to anger against a stone which hurts us but against him who threw it And what ill soever we suffer it will never raise this Passion if we do not imagine that there is some cause which had an intention to make us suffer it Yet because he who chastiseth with a purpose to do ill doth not always provoke Anger there must be one kinde of ill proper to move this Passion which being properly moved may cause the Soul to rise against that which is the cause thereof Others as we have already said will have it be Scorn there being nothing more powerful to provoke Anger nor any ill which a man more impatiently suffers yet since Children and Beasts are not sensible of it who nevertheless are often touched with this Passion and that we every day see very many who patiently suffer Scorn who are all in a fury if you do but take from them what they believe is their due Finally we are angry with our selves with chance with insensible things by which we can no ways be despised so that we must confess there must be some other ill which moves Anger Others will have it to be an Injury men indeed are never so angry as against those by whom they think they have been unjustly offended And when we think the offence hath been done without design or believe that we have deserved it we no longer seek to revenge it On the other side it seems as if Beasts cannot know injuries since they know not unjust things and so we must say that they are not susceptible of Anger could injuries onely provoke it But if we consider that Children who have not the use of Reason and whose knowledge is not much different from that of Beasts forbear not to know when they are unjustly offended that a Lyon is not angry with a stone or a thorn which hurts it that there are Beasts fierce enough which in play suffer ill without seeking revenge and are seldom angry with Children It 's very probable that there is some kinde of justice amongst them that they know there are ills which they ought not suffer and that they know who offends them out of design not that they have the knowledge of things so clear and so distinct as men may have but the same instinct which guides them to their end without their pretending to arrive thereunto affords them also the knowledge of the wrong which is done them without discerning it It 's true there
the spirits and the blood slide in the veins in the same manner as water runs in the Channels of Fountains or in Rivers whose beds are large and even for Love which dilates the spirits proportionably enlargeth the vessels and so giveth them the more liberty it renders their course less turbulent and confused But the chief reason of this equality is because Love hath commonly no other Passions following it which have contrary motions as anger which is always accompanied with grief and which retires the spirits towards the heart at the same time when it drives them forth For although Joy Desire and Hope which are almost always with Love diversly move the blood yet they doe not imprint motions quite opposite as we shall make it appear so that it is not subject to that tumult nor to that unequal agitation which the contrarities cause in fluid bodies but with what violence soever it be driven all its parts flow equally and without confusion and there is no doubt but that secret joy which Lovers feel without thinking even of the beloved object proceeds from some kinde of motion whose impression remains in the humors after the cessation of the minds agitation For as Nature loves order and equality in all her actions when she sees the motion of the blood conformable to her inclination she is sensible of a certain joy whose image or shaddow presents it self to our minds and disposeth us to mirth without knowing the cause and I beleeve for the same reason that if the humors were always agitated with this flux and reflux which the opposite Passions use to cause there would not be a moment in Love exempt from grief and perplexity and that those excesses of joy would never be felt which so often happen because that the soul cannot suffer contrary motions but that she must at the same time suffer some pain and some kinde of grief But what shall we say then when these turbulent Passions as Anger Fear and Despair mingle with Love ought it to give them place when they enter the minde and dye when they spring forth seeing its motion is contrary to theirs truly I beleeve that the habit of Love remains still but the Passion ceaseth when another destroys its motion and principally if it be violent and indeed a man in anger or possessed with fear thinks not on the beloved object and at the least the thoughts he hath of it are stiffled by those of revenge or of the danger he would shun It s true that as these Passions enter instantly into the minde they commonly go out as readily when at the same time the first returns the impression of the beloved object furnishing new Idea's which awaken the appetite and cause therein a new commotion which is nothing difficult to beleeve if we consider that the appetite and the spirits are agitated more easily then the air And that their motion is in some manner like that of lightning which pierceth the clouds in an instant which followes flash after flash and leaves no trace of the way they made And if these Passions are weak they may be well enough compatible with Love but they diminish its ardor because the soul dividing it self to several objects cannot wholly give it self to what is lovely and because the agitation which this causeth in the humors is hindred by the flood of those others which oppose its course Now let 's see what this vehemency is which accompanies this motion of the spirits and whether it be as great in this Passion as it is in anger in fear and in the rest For its certain there are some which naturally are not so violent as Hope and Compassion where there never is those extreme transports which are to be observed in the rest Now you must not think that Love is as the two latter and that it hath the moderation they have the sallies it makes and the tempests it raiseth are sometimes so great that it wracks the minde and the alteration which all the body suffers in those encounters is an evident witness that the humors are moved with a great impetuosity the beginnings truly are sweet and we may say they are like to those peaceable winds which a weak heat raiseth and which afterwards change into whirlwindes when it grows stronger for as at the birth of this Passion the Idea of the beloved object makes no great impression in the minde being if we may so speak but lightly and superficially printed so it also causeth in the appetite but a light emotion but when it hath insinuated it self into the bottom of the minde and hath rendered it self master of the imagination then it puissantly raiseth all the moving faculties and causeth those great storms which often make us lose both our reason and our health Yet will I not say when the soul is come to this excess but that the appetite and the spirits are continually agitated with this violence I confess the tempest is not always alike that it often abates and even dissipates it self whether it be that the divers designes this Passion inspires divert the Soul from its first and principal thoughts or that all things which are in nature cannot always last in one violent estate and that the minde is weary to be long stretched towards one object whence it happens that the strongest Passions at last become languishing and quiet themselves and indeed those great transports of which we speak are never but when the beloved object presents it self to the imagination with some powerful charmes as it happens in the first thoughts it hath of it or when unawares it presents it self to the sence or when the minde figures new perfections in it and forms new designs to compass the possession thereof for then the Soul being surprised with this lovely Novelty is shaken all at once and drives the Spirits like a great billow which ought to transport it to its offer'd good But what if Love moves the spirits thus it must needs produce the same effects as joy doth and that its violence must quench the heat of the entrails and cause fainting and syncopes as this doth it seems that even necessarily these accidents must be in it since these two passions have the same object that they are but little separate and that they have a growth alike for where Love is extreme joy ought also to be so and yet none of those symptomes whereof we have spoken have been observed to be in Love at least if any such like thing hath happened to Lovers the excess of those two Passions never was the cause but it must have been Grief Despair and the like how comes it to pass then that the Love of beauty produceth not the same effects as Joy doth or that Joy causeth not the same accidents in this Passion which it often causeth alone To discover this secret you must first suppose that these disorders seldom happen that they have been observeable only
Pleasures as those of the Senses become distastful and importunate because they are not absolutely convenient for nature they surpass the natural capacity of the powers and their use weakens and corrupts the organs but those which are pure and true do never disgust because they never exceed the natural reach of the Soul but they perfect it and instead of burthening and weaking they ease and fortifie it It is true they may give a little because the minde being a lover of novelty and finding it no longer in an object whereto it hath long applied it self it also findes not that satisfaction which it took at the begining and seeks by change to nourish its desire and inclination But we have spoken enough of these things wherewith Moral Philosophy is full let us examine the Characters which Joy imprints on the Body Of all the many Characters which Joy imprints on the body There are the looks onely the serenity of the forehead Laughter Caresses and disquiet which are caused by the Souls command all the rest happen without her thought and have no other cause but the agitation of the humors which necessarily produce those effects For the Looks there are three kindes common to this Passion for it renders them sweet dying and unquiet we will say what is the cause of these last when we speak of the disquiet and impatience which appears in all its other actions The Looks are sweet either because they are modest or because they are laughing and these are proper to Joy which causeth the lids to fall a little and contract themselves and which fills the eyes with a certain pleasant splendor Now this splendor comes from the spirits which arrive in those parts and the motion of the lids is effected by smiling and by the design which the soul hath to preserve the image of the desirable object as we shewed in seeking the causes of amorous Looks so that we have onely these which are called dying which require a long examen We have already said in the discourse of Love that they were called so because those which dye cast forth the like lifting up their eyes on high and half hiding them under their lids But that seems very difficult to conceive that Looks which accompany Languor Grief and Death should be found in the excess of Pleasure Yet as there are several things contrary which have common effects because they have common causes it may also be that this kinde of Look findes the same cause in Grief and in Joy in the pangs of Death as in the ravishment of Pleasure Let us then examine the reasons why they are to be found in these troublesome Passions that we may see whether there be any which may be accommodated to Joy First we need not doubt but Grief lifts up the eyes on high and looks up to heaven as the place whence it expects help to drive away the ill which afflicts it For Nature hath given that instinct and inclination to man to have recourse to superiour powers when he believes himself abandoned by the rest So that without minding it his mouth invokes them his eyes turn towards them and his arms are lifted up to crave their assistance It also happens that this Passion which would flee the ill which presents it self gathering up within it self draws along with it all the more moveable parts and so retires the eyes in as if it thought to hide it self by hiding those organs whence she seems most to shew her self Or rather it comes from that the parts being void of spirits which the force of Grief dissipated or transported elsewhere they of themselves repossess their natural situation which is to be a little lifted up For it is certain that the situation of the parts when they rest is more natural then that which they have in action wherein there is always some kinde of constraint And we must consequently believe that the eyes which take that site in sleeping seek it as the most calm and most natural for them So that it seems the looks become dying in Grief as they do in Sleep by the flight of the spirits which leave the eyes to their rest Death may also cause this effect by the convulsion which often accompanies it and which makes the nerves retire to their origine or by reason of weakness cannot retain the parts in that tension which their action requires so that the lids fall and the eyes are lifted up taking again as we have said their natural situation Of all these causes there is onely the gathering up of the Soul and the drawing back of the Spirits which are to be found in Joy and from whence these dying looks may take their birth for they have no assistance to implore nor convulsion to fear But in the transport which the enjoyment of Good gives the Soul it often quits the exteriour parts gathers the spirits inwardly together or carries them elsewhere and so forsaking the eyes leaves them the liberty to regain their natural situation which makes them appear languishing and dying The Forehead is serene when it is smoothe and without wrinkles and this smoothness comes from that all the muscles are extended and equally draw it out on every side or from that they are all at rest and leave it in its ordinary situation Now it seems that Joy causeth a serenity of the forehead in both manners For it is certain that as it hath the property to dilate and disperse the soul and the spirits it seeks to do the same in all the parts of the body So that because the muscles cannot move but by contracting themselves it never intends to move those of the forehead since it would cause a motion contrary to its designe chiefly their action being not necessary in this encounter as that of the eyes might be and of the tongue and of others which it agitates in this Passion for particular reasons The Forehead then remains calm and without contracting it self On the contrary it seems to open and on all sides to extend it self by reason of the spirits which rarifie the parts and makes them appear the larger Yet because that in Laughter the forehead becomes smoothe by the stretching of the muscles which equally draw it upwards and downwards it might seem that Joy which causeth Laughter caused also that tension and brought that serenity to the forehead as well by moving as by slacking the muscles But in the following Discourse we will shew that it is not Joy which produceth that effect but the Surprize which is the true cause of Laughter 'T is not but that the Soul without that Surprize may extend the forehead by contracting the muscles but then it is a feigned and forced serenity as that of Flatterers of which Aristotle says that the Forehead is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say stretched and not contracted as the Translators have explained it for it is the Muscles which are contracted but the Forehead
In fine it is from thence that all natural vertues draw their force and vigour for as they do not work but by the assistance of the spirits when they come and shed themselves on the organs they must necessarily grow stronger and their functions must be done more perfectly so there are no ill humours which may corrupt the purity of the blood seeing the vertue which concocts them is always mistris of them and that which expels them findes them obedient for the spirits melt them and send them to the surface and open the passages to let them out So that it is true there is no Passion which is so great friend to health as Joy so as it be moderate for if it be excessive it changeth all natural oeconomy it quencheth the heat of the intrails and at last by Mortal Syncopes or by incurable languors it causes even the loss of our lives We have already touched the Reasons in the former Discourse where we shewed that Love and Joy carried the spirits abroad with precipitation it often happens that in the violence of that transport they lose the union which they should have with their principle whence follow Faintings and Syncopes For I doe not esteem that the dissipation of the Spirits as is commonly said is the principal cause of those actions since so many watchings so many toyles so many sicknesses which dissipate them more then any Passion whatsoever cause not these sad Symptomes but according to my opinion it comes from that they disunite and separate themselves from the heart and that the Soul being unable to animate the separated parts or communicate any vertue to them the actions which they ought to do must cease by this separation which the vehemency of their motion caused This is the cause why water cast on the face oft-times puts away those faintings and sends back the straggling spirits to the heart which would not be were they quite lost It is not but that here they make a great dissipation as they abundantly disperse themselves on all the parts and principally on the outward and the soul which is wholly occupied in the enjoyment of good takes no care to continue the course and to produce new ones it must necessarily make a great loss of them and consequently natural heat must diminish whence comes weakness and the languishing of the parts the corruption of the humours corroding diseases and at last death It might be demanded why Joy causeth death rather then Love or Anger but we have shewed this in the particular discourse of the Passions There remains nothing now but the Motions of the Heart of the Arteries and of Respiration to be examined which are all alike in this that they are great rare slow and without vehemency unless this Passion be excessive for then they become little weak and frequent and even often they quite cease to be The hearts motion then is rare and flow because the heat is not vehement having sent it with the spirits towards the outward parts So that having no need of any great refreshing it hasts not so much to move considering that also the soul which is ravished in the enjoyment of good minds not the motion of the heart but as it is urged by necessity whence it comes that it moves slowly and with great intervalls But to supply its negligence it every time very much opens and extends it recompencing its neglect by the greatness of its motion Now because there must be always some vigour thus to open and extend that part when the violence of the Passion hath dissipated its forces the motion of the heart must become weak and little and the necessity it hath to move for the generation of spirits renders it quick and frequent because it cannot supply its slowness by the greatness of the motion So that if the weakness be extreme it loseth also its swiftness and so becomes slow and rare and at last quite ceaseth The same is done in the Pulse and in Respiration for they have the same customs and the same causes with the hearts motion as Physick teacheth us CHAP. IV. The Characters of Laughter I Know not why Socrates heretofore said that Man was a ridiculous creature But I know if any reason can make it credible we need go no further to seek it then in Laughter it self since there is nothing so ridiculous as to see him who undertakes to control all Nature and who believes himself to be her Confident to be ignorant of what is most proper and familiar to him To laugh at every moment without knowing wherefore and to know neither the subjects nor the motions which form this Passion For all the great men of the past ages which have enquired the causes thereof have freely confess'd that their mindes were incapable of that knowledge remitting us to that Philosopher who laughed continually and that it was hid in the same depth wherein he had enclosed the Truth Now although we do not think our selves clearer sighted then they yet our designe having obliged us to handle this Subject we are constrained to go beyond them and to undertake a thing wherein they lost their courage But what success soever we have the Discourse cannot but divert and please us for if it do not discover the nature of Laughter yet it will at least augment the number of ridiculous things To begin therefore according to the Order we have hitherto observed we must first draw the picture thereof and then enquire the causes which produce it Now as it may be weak mean or vehement it is certain that we are chiefly to observe the Characters of the later because that in all kinde of things the Greater is always to be the measure of the Lesser because its effects are more sensible then the others nay we may even say that there are no Passions how violent soever which cause such great alterations in the body as this doth For if you consider the Face The Forehead extends it self the Eye brows decline themselves the Lids contract themselves at the corners of the eyes and all the skin about them becomes uneven and wrinkles it self all over the Eyes extenuate and half shut themselves they grow sparkling and humid and even those from which Grief could never draw a tear are then obliged to weep the Nose crumples up and grows sharp the Lips retire and lengthen themselves the Teeth discover themselves the Cheeks lift themselves up grow more firm and sometimes the middle of them sweetly hollows it self and forms those delightful pits wherein the Poets lodg'd Laughter with the Graces the Mouth which is forced to open it self discovers the trembling and suspended Tongue and the Voice which issues is nothing but a piercing and interrupted sound which cannot be stopped which ends onely with the loss of our breath the Neck swells and shortens it self all the Veins are great and extended a certain sweet splendor disperseth it self over all the
possest the Appetite But supposing that Love dilates them and Desire joynes it self with it will it not cause any change certainly when the Soul sees the good absent and that in effect she possesseth it not she must bate somewhat of the designe she had to open and extend herself to unite her to its Idea and she gathers her self together to pursue it the more swiftly So that it is likely she contracts not the Spirits in this Passion as she doth in Fear but that she reunites and somewhat regathers them driving them towards the absent Good But we will forbear these things which being too subtil and too obscure flee from our sight and tire the minde that we may seek the causes of the Characters we have marked PART 4. The Causes of the Characters of Desire LOve and Desire being the most general Passions of the minde are also the most fruitful in actions but if you respect the causes which are nearest their effects you must confess that Desire is the most active and that all human actions although they proceed from Love as from their original source seem to draw their origine from Desire as from their neerest and most sensible cause so that we may say that Love is as it were the seed but that Desire is the stock or trunk which affords life and motion to all the branches However it be we have not undertaken to give an account of all the effects which this Passion produceth it will be sufficient to examine the most general and the most ordinary And first of all to enquire what it is that renders it importunate impudent base and unquiet why it is boundless and how difficulties provoke it It is true that who ardently desires a thing renders himself easily Importunate because the violent Passion he hath to obtain it makes him blindly seek it without considering the persons and without examining the time or the place which might favour him in his designe he pursues it everywhere he craves it continually and as if all the world ought to contribute to his pleasure he solicites he urgeth he tires all those whose succour he may have and which may make him enjoy the good he desires besides having no other thought but that and his minde being continually bent on that Object reason findes no time to be understood nor power to contain the sallies of this unbridled Passion She even suffers herself to be thereby carried away and so abandons the conduct of her actions to blinde and rash powers And even from thence that Impudence comes which commonly accompanies Desire for as it is a certain boldness which makes us with pleasure undertake dishonest things and which makes us scorn the imfamy which they may cause he must necessarily be impudent who is pressing and importunate seeing he takes a liberty beyond good manners and that he fears not the blame which his shamelesness deserves But if desire cause boldness how can it then render a man Base and Timerous It may be said 't is done at several times That sometimes we fancy the things we desire are easily obtained and that sometimes there are great obstacles to be overcome and that as these different thoughts enter the minde they introduce either Boldness or Fear Hope or Despair Now although this be true it is also evident that that Boldness which breeds Impudence is not always incompatible with Baseness if it apprehend not infamy it may fear every other thing and we cannot doubt but those who sollicite with so much urgency and submission a person inferior to them are possest with a very cowardly Boldness and a base and servile Impudency Disquiet Impatience and Irresolution are also inseparable from Desire for the minde seeing it self deprived of the good she imagined necessary for her can take no rest til she hath obtained it The moments which retard its enjoyment seem years and ages the least impediments appear great obstacles and all the means she findes to make her the sooner enjoy the desired good are in her opinion weak and unprofitable so that forming at every moment new designes heaping desires upon desires and increasing difficulties by her irresolutions she uncessantly agitates and disquiets herself and findes not even in their possession the end of her troubles as we have shewed in the discourse of Joy But whenee comes it that Desires do thus encrease and multiply and that like waves they follow and drive one the other that obstacles make them encrease and that they have no bounds which can contain them It is true that the greatest part of our desires are of that Nature that they cannot be bounded and that they become infinite but there are others also which never pass their just extent To know the reason of this difference you must suppose that there are desires necessary for this life and others which are not so those are common to all creatures and are inspired by Nature these are proper to man and proceed from the opinion and choice he makes not onely of necessity but also of superfluous things The first have their certain bounds because Nature who leads them is determined to a certain end from which she never straggles and wherein she findes her rest when she is there arrived but the others are infinite for asmuch as the will whence they originally come is an Universal power which is not to be filled but by the possession of all things and which being unable to be satisfied by any one incessantly runs from one to another and forms as many desires as there are goods whersof she is in want it is not that all the desires which part from our choice are infinite when they are ruled by right reason they have also their bounds and we may also be sure that they are as natural and as necessary as those which serve ths necessities of life For right reason being nothing else but what is convenient for the Nature of man the Desires which are regulated thereby are as it were natural and by so much the more necessary as they serve the noblest part which is in him But this belongs to another Discourse Let us now see why Difficulty provokes Desire it is not that by putting of the Soul further off from the good she thought readily to enjoy she obligeth her to use the more endeavour to draw neerer unto it or else the impediments inspiring new designes give it also new subject for Desire which uniting it self to the former make the Passion appear the greater but these Passions are not Universal for they suppose we alwayes wish the good before these impediments present themselves and in the mean time it is true that difficulty and resistance doe often breed a desire of certain things which we had never sought how desireable soever they were had they not been forbidden us and difficult We must then conclude that the first source of this effect proceeds from the natural inclination which is in man for
have already spoken we shall without difficulty enquire the reasons and send back the Reader to the place whence we deduced them For sighs and extasies loss of speech sleep and appetite have herein no other causes but as in Love The face grows red and swell'd by the arrival of blood and spirits which cast themselves on the outward parts as is already said Tears proceed from grief which the privation of Good too attentively considered breeds in the Minde The motion of the heart and arteries is great because the soul endeavours to open them to send forth a quantity of spirits frequent because of the violence and haste it makes to get them out and unequal by the mixture of other Passions The body grows lean and dry because those parts which digest the humours and those which are to be nourished by them being weakned by the flight of the spirits perform it not as they ought and cannot convert them into their substance as was said in the Discourse of Love There remains nothing now but an effect of Desire which being extraordinary deserves a longer examen then the former It is that a too ardent Desire makes a man grow old in a day as Theorictus that is to say makes the hair gray in a short time according to the ordinary explication of that passage For my part I must confess that the observation is particular enough and I do not remember that I have seen it anywhere but in that Author But since the same thing happens in Fear and in Despair which in a night change the hair and that cares and displeasures make a man grow gray before his time it is impossible but Desire may sometimes cause the same effect all the difficulty is to know how it may be done You must then suppose with Aristotle that hair grows gray for want of heat fit and natural for it that it then suffers a kind of corruption and rottenness and that it happens as to all other things that in corrupting it turns white in effect we cannot deny but that it is the old age of the hair And since that of all the body happens from the diminution of natural heat it is likely it proceeds from the same cause when this heat then diminisheth it produceth two effects in the hair for the aliment which ought to nourish it digests not but flies into vapours and the air fills the place of the Spirits Now vapours contain much air and air is the first cause of whiteness as we see in scum and experience teacheth us that to make the hair white we must wet and expose it to the air And it is true that heat growing weak either by little and little or suddenly indigestion is the chief cause of whiteness of hair when the heat is consumed by dely grees but when it readily dissipates as it happens in sicknessess and vehement Passions it is chiefly the air which whitens it sliding into the pores and taking the place of the retired spirits Some will say If this be true the hair of dead men should be always white natural heat being extinct and the air environing them might easily insinuate it self into its pores To this it must be answered that after death there remains a natural heat in the hair as in the bones which are long preserved after the expiration of the creature whose parts they were But this heat is immoveable and incapable of any fruition of life being deprived of the souls influence which gave it efficacie and motion So there are no more crudities made because the aliments rise no more thither and the air cannot occupie the place of the spirits which are there fixt and stopt Certainly we cannot but confess that the soul inspires some vertue into those parts that she takes some care of them and that she governs them as she pleaseth otherwise what should cause that delightful and regular painting in the plumage of Birds what should so justly compass the eye-brows what should so carefully regulate the hair of the eye-lids lastly what should cause all that so wel measur'd a diversity which is to be observed in the hair of beasts As that commonly follows the species of every creature it must needs be that the soul wherein it is contained conduceth also to this work and that she at her pleasure disposeth of those parts wherein she causeth so many wonders This being granted it is not hard to say how Fear Desire and Cares may change the hair for in retiring the spirits they derive it of the influence it received from them they dry up that spring of life which did rise to its roots and draw away that vital heat which ran thorow its pores It is true this seldom happens and there must be a great violence and a great disposition to produce this effect For there are certain actions from which it is very difficult to withdraw Nature and what tempest soever happens to it she but seldome forsakes their rudder and conduct Such are the functions of the Vegetative soul which are principally made by the means of the fixt spirits and being not subject to the power of the Imagination or of the Appetite remain quiet whilst the others erre here and there and are agitated by the several motions which the Passions impress But yet it sometimes happens that by reason of the conjunction which there is between the parts of the soul the disorders of the one are communicated to the other and that the Natural faculty is carried away by the Sensitive principally in those whose spirits are more mobile and the substance of their parts more soft So that those persons whose imagination is very strong and who have the weakest brain more easily grow gray then other men by the violence of those Passions which we have spoken of CHAP. VI. The Characters of Hope HE who gave away all he had and reserved onely Hope made not so ill a bargain as it may be imagined He took for himself that which is the sweetest in life the most durable Good which can be found therein In a word we may say that he had for his share all what he had not and that he truely divided for himself like a King Indeed as there are no other Goods whereof we are sensible but those which we possess and those which we hope for it is certain that possession affords not a perfect contentment here belowe for that it cloys the Minde and takes away the knowledge of the good it possesseth that it even corrupts the Nature of it and straight begets a distaste But Hope which awakens the Minde and renders it clearer-sighted represents the Good as it is shews it in its purity and gives a far more delicious taste of it then Enjoyment can For it is so ingenious that it separates it self from all the Ills which are mixt with it it purifies it self from all the defects which accompany it and as we may say that it is then the
there left and feeling also if we may so speak the shake which the desire of Vengeance had given it it insensibly suffers it self to be carried away and so continues its first designs which it always causeth happily to succeed being no longer conducted by the Sences nor by Reason nor taking any other counsel but such as self-love and Pride which Anger brings along with it affords it For it is from thence these advantages come which a man who sleeps upon his wrath believes he receives in all his Dreams it seems to him that he is alwayes the stronger of the better address he never sees his Enemy but he represents him unto himself either weak or submitting and he in them undertakes no combate but he comes off with the Victory and in Triumph But it may also happen that the Soul may be altogether in a calm and that no remains of the trouble which the Passion had before brought may stay behind and yet all these illusions will not forbear to happen and then it is no longer a continuation of its first designs but a new motion which the Spirits and the Humors raise in the fancy for whether their agitation subsists after that of the Soul the impression of the motion preserving it self longer in these bodies then in the Appetite whether by reason Choler being separated from the mass of blood cannot so soon resume its just place both are able to form all these violent Dreams which we have spoken of The difficulty is to know how this may be done since these things touch not the sences which are benummed nor consequently the imagination which works onely on those images which it hath thence received And were they even at liberty there is no likelihood that they should know what passeth thus in the secret of the Veins What then is it which can raise in the Soul all these Chimera's and Phantasms which have so much relation with that Motion which the spirits then suffer and so much resemblance with that humor which is in disorder We must certainly confess that besides this exterior knowledge which the Sences afford her she hath another which is interior and secret which Nature hath inspired by means whereof she sees and knows all what is done in her organs and that with that light she who is present with all the parts easily observes what is done in them and afterwards communicates it to the imagination which is as it were the center of all her knowledge But forasmuch as this is obscure and confused she instructs not this Faculty clearly and affords it onely a general view of those objects which concern her it 's for the same reason also that she forms no perfect images which respect things as they are but which onely have some relation and agreement together So when choler is moved although the Soul distinctly knows not the nature nor the species yet she knows it to be a humor which is hot and ardent and upon the report which she hath made thereof to the imagination this fancies to it self sparkling colours flames and burnings which have a conformity with that general notion which she had received of them And because that she also knows that this Humor serves Anger and Boldness to destroy the Enemy which they assault seeing herself in such a condition as in these Passions she useth to be in she presently thereupon proposeth such objects and designes and so forms Enemies Assaults and Combates We may say as much of the agitation which remains in the Spirits after the esmotion of the Soul is at an end For observing it during sleep she who knows that it 's the motion which in Anger she makes use of reingageth herself afresh in this Passion and sleeping reassum the desires and designs of revenâ—â— which waking she had already given over She doth the like also proportionably when the other humors are irregular when the spirits finde themselves agitated with the motion of some other Passion in a word it is thus that she forms all Dreams which come from the good or ill disposition of the body as we have shewed in the Treatise of Love out of Inclination There remains two effects onely to be examined concerning which we must consult Physick for it is from her we must learn What Pulse there is in Anger and in what disposition the Heart and the Lungs are when it is kindled in those parts As for the first All Physicians are agreed That the Pulse herein is great high quick frequent and vehement and that the violence of the heat and force of the vital Faculty are the principal causes of all these differences But although all this be true yet we may say that this kinde of Pulse is not proper and particular to Anger since it is also to be found in Boldness as we declared treating of that Passion and that certainly there must be somewhat which hitherto hath not been observed which distinguisheth it from this there being no probability that these two Passions should diversly agitate the Soul and the Spirits without causing also in the Heart and in the Arteries different motions It is therefore certain that in both of them the pulse is great and high but in Boldness it is full and extented and we may feel the Artery under our fingers which swells every way instead that in Anger it puts all her endeavor forwards and without enlarging it self it darts it self outwardly making the pulse thereby high which seems rather streight then large And certainly as the Spirits follow the design of the Soul which throws herself out of herself to assault the Enemy their sally must needs be made as hers is from the center to the circumference and that if the Arteries are to be restrained as it is necessary and as we shall hereafter demonstrate it ought to be by the sides that the Spirits may be left at liberty to dart themselves forth but there is no question to be made of this effect nor of its cause if we remember that Grief and Boldness are here mingled together and that at the same time both of them agitate the Heart and the Arteries with a motion proper to them for if Grief ought to restrain it that Boldness at the same time might open it they must be streightned in some of the parts and enlarged in others in pursuit whereof the Pulse appears high without being extended as hath been said yet we must observe that it is principally so in the motions of Anger or that when it is in the ardor of Vengeance or that it turns into Fury this contraction is no more felt but it is found to be altogether large and full as it is in Boldness or whether the sence of Grief be stifled or its effect suspended by the violence of other Passions or whether the Soul which is then as it were out of herself minds no longer her preservation and without having a care of sheltering her self she blindly
A DISCOURSE UPON THE PASSIONS In Two Parts Written Originally in FRENCH English'd by R.W. Esq LONDON Printed by Tho. Newcomb for Hen. Herringman at the Anchor on the Lower Walk of the New-Exchange 1661. THE CHARACTERS Of the PASSIONS Written in French BY THE Sieur de la CHAMBRE Physitian to the Lord Chancellor of FRANCE Translated into English LONDON Printed by Tho. Newcomb for JOHN HOLDEN at the Anchor in the New-Exchange 1650. TO The Lord SEGVIER Chancellor of FRANCE MY LORD IT is nothing strange to you to see the effects and disorders which the Passions cause since the Justice you dispence is most commonly employed in hearing and condemning of them But it is a most unheard-of thing to crave your protection for them that they might even be authorized by you and that your name should be used to make them pass in Publick and give them a general approbation Yet my Lord it is what I this day do in dedicating this Work unto you I make you the protector of the excesses I therein present even in some sort I speak you to be the Author of them since your commands were the cause of their production and by a boldness without example I use the illustrious name of The Seguiers to be the prop of Vices and I bring them to light with such advantages wherewith Vertue would esteem her self highly honoured It is true they are not of the nature of those which corrupt Manners or which fear the severity of the Laws these are but their Images and Figures which may be received as those of Monsters and of Tyrants and which ought to be no less pleasing to sight then the pictures of conquered persons use to be to their Conquerours But although hereby my Temerity becomes less odious yet I perceive it is nothing less excusable and that you will ever blame me for having profaned your Name mixing it with so many defaults for having exposed to your eyes things the Art of which is not much less vitious then their Matter and for having thought that I could have told you some new thing on a Subject in which you are ignorant of nothing but the ill usage yet if your Greatness please to remember that you are the object of all my thoughts that I can make nothing but it must bear the marks of your benefits and that even the Tempests which I here shew are the effects of the Calm and Tranquillity you have procured me you will then perceive that it is as well out of Necessity as Election that I consecrate this little Work unto you and that finding my self obliged to publish the resentment I have of the extreme favours which you have heaped on me J ought to leave in the violent Passions a way to express that which J love to be all my life My Lord Of your Greatness The most humble most obedient and most faithful servant La Chambre Advertisement TO THE READER HAving already spoken of those Passions which respect Good Wee were oblig'd to examine those who have Ill for their Object But because the Soul may two waies consider Ill and that it is sometimes an Enemy which she combates and sometimes flyes according to those two several designs she also forms two Ranks of different Passions The one of which may be call'd the Courageous and the other the Timerous For since Courage is nothing but a Power of the Soul which employs the forces of the Animal to stop or overcome Evills Wee need not doubt but those Passions which serve those purposes are conducted by the same Power and that consequently they ought not to be otherwise call'd then Couragious Even as Such as dare not expect the Enemy may certainly be concluded Timerous When the Soul indeed thinks her self weaker then the Ill She endeavors to shun the encounter and according to the motions she makes to enstrange her self from it she forms Hatred Aversion Grief Fear and Despaire But when she thinks her self sufficiently strong to overcome it or at least to bear its assaults then she raiseth up Boldness Anger and Constancy which are the Couragious Passions whose Nature and Characters Wee shall now examine But perhaps Reader the Preposition wee have made and established as the Principle of all the differences of these Passions will beget a very reasonable doubt which thou would'st willingly have clear'd before thou enterest on the Subject For if the Soul thinks it self stronger or weaker then the Ills she must compare her forces with theirs and consequently she must Reason forasmuch as without reasoning wee cannot compare one thing with another So that the Soul of Beasts which is susceptible of these Passions must be oblig'd to reason when she would make use of them And so she would become Reasonable And so Reason would no longer be that difference which distinguisheth Man from other Animals Would'st thou but content thy self with Resolutions which are commonly given in the Schools upon such like differences I could easily resolve this saying that in these encounters she forms no true Reasonings that they are only gross and imperfect images of it and that they are the effects of that instinct which God hath given to all Animals to enlighten them and guide them in their actions But because this answer is not capable to satisfy such Minds who would clearly discerne things and that the word Instinct seems to be in the rank of those termes wherewith our Ignorance flatters it self and under which she thinks to find shelter I thought fit to satisfie thy curiosity and even to give some light to those things of which I am hereafter to speak and therefore oblig'd my self more exactly to inquire what the Nature of this Instinct which makes such a noise and which so few understand was and to observe how far the knowledge of the sensible Soul can reach and last of all to shew thee that there accrews no great Inconvenience in believing that Beasts reason And doubtless this was the place where we ought to examine these Noble famous questions which contain the Principles of all the Souls motions and which may serve for a Preface and ground-work for all what we have to say of those Passions who have Ill for their object Yet this Discourse being somewhat overlong and the difficulty of the subjects treated therein requiring a great assiduity of Mind I thought it not fit to place these thornes at the entrance into the work which perhaps might have disgusted thee to have proceeded or might have tir'd thee before thou wert arriv'd in the way wherein I would have engag'd thee I therefore leave it at this time yet if thy curiosity desires satisfaction in things of that Nature The Discourse of the Reason of Beasts is already printed which yet for our mutuall satisfaction I shall entreat thee not to undertake the reading of unless thou wilt perform it at once and without interruption It s a Discourse whose parts are so linked together that they
cannot be divided without diminishing the force and grace which the whole pretends to As for the rest wonder not if in the Pictures of the Passions I present thou findest some touches of vertues and vices and if for example in the description of Boldness thou encountrest actions which seem to belong to valor and generosity I consider Passion in its nature and in its essence and as it is a motion of the Soul every where where I know this Motion to be I also acknowledge the Passion So that vertue being nothing but a regulated motion and a Passion moderated by Reason and since a moderated Passion is still a Passion Discoursing in general of the Passions I may speak of those which are under Vertues direction aswell as those which are directed by Vice The Stationer to the Reader THe Gentleman whose pastime it was to English these Characters as they had pleased him so he judged they could not but be grateful to an ingenuous Reader and therefore commended them to the Press And to shew how far he was from the new vanity of erecting his Statue in the front he thought fit rather to use the practice of Painters who how well soever they may have copied Master-pieces never set their names but to Originals that as he pretends no Praise he may thereby frustrate Censure Yet he is consident of his Authors merit and that this Work of his will move love and delight in all but those who are possest with malignant Passions they indeed may quarrel with Love oppose Desire vex Joy frown on Laughter and even put Hope out of patience but against such Laughter alone will be sufficient And for the rest if the English Chanel run too neer the French Coast and that some may think the Translation over-fraught with Gallicisms perhaps they are such as themselves in their ordinary discourse often use with affectation But from them the Passions take about and steer their course to the Ladies acknowledging them the onely Admirals of these Seas to whom whether they come safe or are shipwrack'd they of right belong since none do more powerfully cause or more sensibly suffer them to whose fair hands I am obliged to present them and from whom alone they promise themselves protection March 10. 1649. JOHN HOLDEN A Necessary Advertisement To the READER WHat I here present is but a small part of a Great Designe wherein I intend to examine the Passions the Vertues and the Vices the Manners and Customs of People the several inclinations of Men their tempers the features of their faces in a word in which I pretend to shew thee what is most excellent and most rare in Physicks Morality and in Politicks I know thou already thinkest that my undertaking is full of Temerity that it is beyond my strength and that there is no likelihood I should ever accomplish a Work the least pieces whereof have startled the greatest men of the former times But I intreat thee Reader to consider that I am but at the beginning of it and that I shall not proceed without the knowledge of thy opinion and further advice therein For if this Essay please thee not and if thou believest that so rich a matter requires more expert and more cunning hands then mine I am ready to quit the Work and to finish it where I commenced it I shall at least have the satisfaction to have endeavoured to please thee and to have found for thy divertisement a designe which may pass for the greatest and the fairest which was ever conceived had it been but performed And that I may give thee a more particular knowledge thereof I will shew thee the Platform and make it appear that ill Architects may have fair Capriccio's and may sometimes form noble Designes What I then proposed to my self was to present thee with The Art to know Men which contains Five general Rules The first is founded on the Characters of the Passions of the Vertues and the Vices and shews that those who naturally have the same air which accompanies the Passions or Actions of Vertue or Vice are also naturally inclined to the same Passions and to the same Actions The second is drawn from the resemblance Men have with other Creatures and teacheth us that those who have any part like to those of beasts have also the inclinations they have The third is grounded on the beauty of the Sex and shews that men who have any thing of a feminine beauty are naturally effeminate and that those women who have any touch of a manly beauty participate also of manly inclinations The fourth is drawn from the likeness which the men of one Climat have with that of another So those who have short noses thick lips curl'd hair and a tawny skin as the Moors have are subject to the same vices to which they are inclined The fifth and last may be called Syllogistick because that without using particular signes which usually designe the Manners of persons it discovers them by discourse and reasonings which is done by two principal means The first is the knowledge of Tempers for without knowing the signes of the inclination a man hath to be angry so as we know that he is cholerick it will suffice to speak him to be inclined to that Passion The second is the most ingenuous and is drawn from the connexion and concatenation which the Passions and the Habits have amongst themselves So when we know a man is fearful we may assure our selves that he is inclined to Avarice that he is cunning and dissembling that he usually speaks sofily and submissively that he is suspicious incredulous an ill friend and the like And although we do not observe particular signes of all these later qualities yet we believe they are found in him because we know the principle whence they deduce their origine These are the first strokes which designe the Platform of the Great Work we intend For as all those Rules are grounded on the relation which Men have with other things its impossible to apply them well without the knowledge of those very things And it is bootless to say that any man is inclined to such a Passion because he bears the Character thereof unless we know what the Character thereof is We must therefore make as many Discourses as there are grounds for these general Rules and divide the whole Work into seven parts The I shall treat of the Characters of the Passions of Vertues and of Vices The II of the nature of the creatures which may be useful to this knowledge The III of the beauty of men and women and of the inclinations which follow them The IV of the difference of the bodies and manners of people The V of Tempers and of the effects which they cause in the Minde and on the Body The VI of the connexion which the Passions and the Habits have amongst themselves The VII shall reduce in order all the signes which shall have been
there is no inconvenience herein and that its true that all that is fair is pleasing and that the proportion of parts being fair must needs please the sight and that therefore they are graceful And indeed the ancients who in these things were wiser then we made not this difference and always placed the graces where beauty was For although Aristotle says that little ones might be call'd pretty and pleasing but that they were not to be esteem'd fair 't is that he spake of an entire and perfect beauty which is not to be found in little bodies for as much as they want that just proportion which belongs to the perfection of man Yet there is some ground for the difference which hath been since made between beauty and grace for as the matter and the form enter into the composition of man we have placed beauty in the figure and in the colour which belongs to the matter and grace in the motions which are effects of the soul not that grace is not in the colour and in the figure or that beauty is not in the motions but because she is more excellent in these by reason that the soul who is the principle thereof is more perfect then the matter and that action is the last perfection of things Beauty which ought to be the most agreeable hath been call'd by the name of grace although in effect it ought to be common to all that is fair and that the colour figure and motion which have all their beauties ought also to have every one their particular graces But to return to our subject the grace is a kind of air and means nothing more but that conformity and proportion whereof we have spoken For when the air is accompanied with this proportion its pleasing so that this air in general is in all those things which have a grace and it may be defin'd A certain exterior and sensible quality which is bred from the colour figure and motion of the parts And if we add that these things are proportionable and conformable to the perfection of man it will be the definition of grace We are notwithstanding to observe that the air appears more in one of these three things in some encounters then in the rest For that which is fixt and natural is chiefly in the figure and situation of the parts That which accompanies the passions depends most from the motion and the colour that of vertuous actions is sometimes in rest because reason hinders those motions which would not befit the moderation and quiet she seeks such is the grave and modest Mine such is the countenance of a man who meditates and thinks on great matters And it may be that even vices which are in excess have an active and turbulent air and those which are in the defect have quite the contrary so a hot and precipitate man is always in action and the lazy is immoveable besides the air appears sometime more in one part then in another and although it be more remarkable in the face then in any other place yet there is one which belongs to walking another in the carriage of the armes and another of the whole body The French hath been more happy to express those differences then any other language whatsoever Not content to say l'Air la Grace Air and Grace it adds la Mine la Contenance le Maintica le Geste le Port which as neer as we can render them are The Mine the Presence the Behaviour the Carriage and the Port. The Mine chiefly belongs to the face the port to the gate the carriage and the behaviour to the arms the Air the Grace and the Presence to the whole body And as the Port and the Gesture or Carriage denote motion so the Mine the Behaviour and the Presence apply themselves best to rest but the air and the grace are common to both of them However it be the air which is in Passions and in moral actions principally comes from motion but you must know what the cause of this motion is For upon this knowledge depends the greatest part of what we are to say and because it will better appear in the passions we will therefore by them begin the enquiry We have already said and we shall often be obliged to repeate that Passions are nothing but the emotions of the appetite by which the soul moves towards good and estrangeth it self from evil and as she hath divers organs which may be used to that end she also employs them and moves according to her intention Now the Spirits without question are the first she makes use of being the most agil and which take their birth from the same place where she forms her designs so that we need not wonder that they are the first to execute them since they seem to be the first who have the knowledge of them The soul then sends forth the spirits and scatters them over all the exterior parts either to acquire good or to oppose ill But when this is too powerful and she is sensible that she is not strong enough to resist it she retires them in and brings them back to the heart Now this flux and reflux brings two great changes because the humors being drawn along with them their arrival swels and agitates the parts and paints them of the same colour of which themselves are on the contrary their flight makes them fail looke pale and renders them immoveable Perhaps it would not be unprofitable to examine whether every passion hath a particular motion of the spirits and whether anger moves them otherwise then shame love joy or the rest which carries them outwardly Whether Fear retire them inwardly after another manner then Hate Aversion or Greif For if this were true and that we could know these differences we could with the more facility discover the causes of the alterations they produce For my part I beleeve that since in every Passion the appetite hath an emotion and a particular end the means it useth ought also to be particular and that the motion of the spirits must be conformable to the intention it hath and to the agitation it gives it self and therefore that that is done in one passion is different from those which are done in others So that its very likely that in one they cast themselves with impetuosity and high boylings like torrents and in another slide as sweetly as rivers that some make them overflow their banks others restrain them in their bounds that now their course is direct and presently again irregular Lastly That we may say love dilates them desire shoots them forth Joy sheds them abroad Hope holds them fast boldness drives them and that anger throws them forth in great boyling gulps and so of the rest as we shall more particularly see in the discourse of the Passions although to speak Truth our spirit is not clear-sighted enough to discern exactly all these differences and that in this
case the window of Momus were very necessary for it How ever it be the soul is not content after this manner only to agitate the spirits and the humors in the passions she also causeth those parts to move which are capable of a voluntary motion as being those which are the most powerful to seek and imbrace good and to repel or flye evil and to speak truth this motion of the spirits is often a succour very useless to the soul and which serves rather to shew her precipitation and blindness then to obtain what she proposed to her self for when they cast themselves into the face she fancies to her self that it is she her self that runs thither and when they retire themselves to the heart it s she also who hides her self there although she be already at the place where she would arrive and that she abandons not that wheene she thinks to estrang herself and what benefit is it to a Creature for the spirits and the blood to goe to the encounter of an agreeable object since neither the soul nor the body come nearer to it nor are any more united to it and that the sences only are they which ought to make this union we may say the same of the resistance she would make to those ills which present themselves for what relation is there betwixt the spirits and an injury and what effect can they make to drive back an ill which most commonly is only in opinion which sometimes is no more or which even is not yet made But it is not thus with voluntary motion for indeed here the hands draw and take what 's useful the body is carryed towards what is lovely it truly keeps a distance from what 's ill and flyes or drives away what incommodates it It s true that there are some of these motions where the soul deceives it self aswel as in that of the spirits how many lost steps ridiculous postures and idle words are there in Passions to what use are these several motions of the head those different figures which the forehead the eyes the nose and the mouth form There may be some relation with the design which the soul proposed since its certain that in shame she casts down the eyes as if she would hide herself that she lifts them up in Anger as if that served to repel an injury and that in scorn she lifts up the nose as if she would drive away what she disdains But it s easie to perceive that herein also she deceives her self and that the blindness and trouble in which she is causeth her to use means which benefit her nothing to the obtaining of what she desires 'T is not that she is therefore to be condemned in all these motions there are many which happen without any design of hers which although they are not against her intention yet she is not the cause of them 't is but by a certain necessity that they follow those motions which the soul inwardly excites for we cannot with reason say that she proposeth in anger the hinderance of respiration and of speech the inflammation of the face and the sparkling of the eyes But these are effects which follow the agitation of the spirits which impetuously cast themselves on the exterior parts as we shall say hereafter By this discourse we may not only perceive what the causes of those motions which the Passions excite are but also which those are which make moral Characters and which make the corporal For those which the soul imploys by a clear and distinct knowledge to obtain the end she pretends in every Passion make the moral Characters and those which she useth by a pure instinct or which happen without any intention of hers form the corporal Characters For these latter are of two sorts the one are by the command of the soul the other are by necessity as you will see more particularly in the following discourses CHAP. II. The Characters of Love LOVE is not only the Spring of all the Passions but even of all the good and of all the ill which happens to men without it there would be no Sciences in the world Vertue would be without followers and Civill society would be but an imaginary good it is that which breeds in us the desire of fair things and makes us possesse them and by a wonderful incantation changeth and transformeth us into them to it we owe all the good things we possesse it may give us those which we want and if it drive not from us the ills which necessarily accompany this life at least it sweetens them nay and even renders them pleasing makes them the instruments of our felicity But this is it also that corrupts vertue ruins society and renders art despicable And if it hath truely brought into the world these excellent things it seems it is only to drive them out again That noble vigor which incites the minde to fair actions that divine fire wherewith they say the soul is clothed and which naturally raiseth it towards Heaven languisheth and dys under the weight of base and terrestrial things upon which this Passion fixeth it In short its this that forms all the tempests which agitate our life there would be no grief no fear nor no despair were there no love and who ever will neerly consider all the passions will easily beleeve that they are but several motions which it causeth and different figures which it assumes Now as there are but few objects which can reach the soul which are not able to move this passion And whereas Riches Honor Pleasure and in a word all Goods whether false or true may raise it we will not here disimbroile this Chaos and our design gives us not leave to speak of any other kind of love but that which beauty begets in the appetite Neither is it a slight enterprize notwith standing the helps those great men of the times past have given us and what endeavour soever we have already made to discover its origine yet are we constrained to confesse that there is somewhat in it which is divine whereto our spirit cannot attain and the same poverty which we finde as they say at its birth happens also in our thoughts when we would speak of it so that were it necessary to observe all the effects thereof we might sooner count the waves of the sea then the motions it causeth in the soul neither doth heat produce or corrupt more things in the world then love causeth both good and evil actions In effect its the instrument of that divine Art which Nature hath provided to preserve her most exellent works without it long since we had no more spoken of Families of Peoples or of Common-wealths and those which were esteem'd the most flourishing had been but the Assemblys of a sort of wild savage beasts had not love sweetned and civilz'd them for it s it that forms us to a civil life which is the true
which seems good unto it It s true that at first this will not seem true because that most commonly in Love the beloved object is absent with whom it is not likely the soul should unite it self but if you consider that objects may be united to the powers by their species and by their images or by their true beings and that consequently there is a real union and another that is not which the schools call intentional and which we may name Ideal you may observe that the union which the appetite makes with the object which the imagination proposeth is of the latter rank because the true being of things enters not into the imagination it s their Idea and their image only and this union is that alone which naturally belongs to the appetite for that it can no otherwise for its part unite it self to the good which is presented unto it if it move towards any other union 't is not for it self that it seeks it but for other powers which may really unite themselves to their objects for the the appetite is a politick faculty which works not only for it self but for all others which are beneath it and as the imagination is the Center of all the sences the appetite is it also of all the inclinations which are in the parts so that the imagination or the understanding proposing to it what is fit it seeks it for them and endevors to procure them the enjoyment thereof and then if they are capable really to unite themselves with their objects it covets their union but this hinders not but that it unites it self before with them by a union proper to it and which is as the principle and spring of all other unions belonging to the soul Perhaps you will say that the understanding and the imagination in the same manner unite themselves to what is fit for them and that therefore Love may be aswel formed there as in the appetite but the difference is great because that the objects come and go in the understanding and in the imagination and the knowledge they have of them is rather gained by rest then by motion as Avistotle says quite contrary to the appetite which moves it self towards its object and goes out as it were of it self to unite it self thereto so that the union which is made in the understanding and in the imagination is purely passive without any motion of its faculties but that of the appetite is active and performed with agitation considering also that the union made by the appetite is more perfect then that which is made by knowledge for as much as the minde may have an aversion from some thing which it hath conceived which is a kind of separation and therefore the union thereof is not so perfect as that of the appetite which cannot endure this division and which consequently is the most accomplished which can be found in the actions of life But if Love be a motion of the Soul to unite it self to what is lovely it seems as if when it is united thereunto there then should be no more motion and consequently no more Love and as this union may be made in a moment for that there is nothing can hinder it it seems as if this motion also were made in an instant and that therefore Love should not last any longer which would be a very strange proposition and contrary to the truth To answer this objection you must observe that there are things which move themselves to attain to some end separate from their motion and that there are others which finde in the motion it self the end they seek the first cease to move when they have attain'd their end But those who have no other end but motion or at least none that is separated from their motion never pretend to rest and as rest is a perfection in those so 't is an imperfection in these now the appetite is of this latter kinde which truly moves to unite it self to what is good but the union it seeks cannot be effected but in motion and when that ceaseth it vanisheth so that whilest the beloved object is present it must incessantly agitate it self to obtain the end it desires which is to unite it self thereunto and if it chance to rest it proceeds from that the object is no longer present with it or at least that it is no more offered unto it as good Love then is a motion and a union of the appetite to what is lovely whether absent or present because its absence hinders not the imagination from proposing the Idea thereof to the appetite which is the only one with which it naturally can unite its true that working for other powers as we have said it stops not at this simple union it seeks what is fit also for them it desires for the seeing and hearing that their objects may be at a reasonable distance for touching and tasting that theirs may be immediatly united to their organs In fine as many ways as things can be united the appetite and the will wish a fit union for them and you must confess that the concourse of all those motions makes the Passion of Love compleat and entire and the first of which we have spoken although it contains all its essence and its form yet hath it not all its extent we may say it is the source and that the others are the brooks which encrease it Le ts now see what this particular agitation is which the appetite causeth to make this union and in what its different from that which is to be found in Joy in Desire and in Hope by which as wel as by love it seems that the soul would unite it self to the good which is presented to it For t is not sufficient for the perfect knowledge of the Passions to say that they are motions unless you observe the differences of these motions and unless you make known the different impressions and the diverss progress which the diversity of these objects cause in the appetite You must then suppose there is some relation between the motions of the Soul and those of the body and that the differences which are found in these in some manner happen in the others For since the effects are like their causes the motions of the body which are the effects of the Soul ought to be the images of that agitation which it gives it self In effect they say that the understanding moves directly towards its object that it reflects and redoubles it self on it that it reenters it self that it wanders and confounds it self which are all phrases drawn from sensible motions and which ought to make us beleeve that somewhat like it is done in the soul and chiefly in its appetitive part because it is by it that in effect it moves and agitates it self neither is it to any purpose to say that they are not true motions but that they only are Metaphorical for besides that
in old men and women and that the joy which moved them was caused either by the gain of some unhoped for victory or by the encounter of some very ridiculous object or by the discovery of some great secret in learning which are joyes which only belong to the minde In effect as spiritual things have that beyond corporal that they are more noble and that they enter into the soul wholly without separating themselves the possession ought also to be more perfect and the joy the more ravishing so that it is likely that the syncopes which are the effects of all violent Passions follow those spiritual joyes as the greatest and most powerful and that they rather happen to weak natures then to those which are stronger and more capable of resistance the soul then finding herself surprised at first sight with these objects and agitating with precipitation to unite her self to them the spirits which follow those motions issue from the heart and dart themselves with so much violence to the superior parts that they lose the union they had with their principle in the same manner as water divides it self being driven with too much impetuosity and because the heat ought continually to inspire the parts with its vertue and that the spirits only can communicate it when they come to disunite themselves from it these influences must then stop and the sensitive and vital actions which depend upon them must also cease till their reunion And because the soul is then quite ravished in the injoyment of that good which she esteems so excellent she cannot minde to remedy that interruption which is made in the spirits nor to bring back those which are scattered or to send others to fill those empty places they left So that these faintings often last long and sometimes cause death heat being quite perished and nature not having strength enough to repair its loss nor to recover its first estate But this disorder cannot happen in the Love whereof we speak for that corporal beauty is never wholly possest and that there is still somewhat which entertaines Desire Hope and Fear So that the soul dividing it self to several designs and suffering it self not to be so powerfully transported as she doth in the enjoyment of spiritual goods the spirits throw themselves not with so much precipitation nor impetuosity and are not so subject to the division which they sometimes suffer in Joy and which is the cause of those syncopes of which we have spoken We shall touch upon this matter again in other places let 's now consider what heat it is which this Passion raiseth and what humors it particularly moves It s certain that Love Joy and Desire disperse through all the body a moist and pleasing heat for as much as the spirits in those Passions stir the most temperate humors whose vapors are sweet and humid but these humors are sooner mov'd then others because that the spirits which have a great likeness with the purest and most subtil parts of the blood as being those whence they draw their origine ought to mingle and unite with them more easily then with those which are grosser and farther from its nature therefore we must not doubt but when they are agitated they first of al draw along with them those parts of the blood whereto they are more strongly tyed which being the most subtil are also the more easie to be moved Besides that the soul to whom the humors serve as instruments to arrive at the end she proposeth employs both the one the other according as they have qualities sit to execute what she wills whence it is that amongst venemous beasts it moves the venome in anger and in all the rest it moves flegme and melancholy because they are the malignant humors which may destroy the ill she assaults so that there being no enemies to combat in the Passion of which we speak it ought not to move any other humors but those which are conformable to the good she would enjoy So that there is only the sweetest and purest blood which commonly moves in Love and causeth that sweet and vaporous heat which disperseth it self through the whole body PART 4. What the causes are of the Characters of LOVE BUt its time to come to the point we proposed from these principles we have established we must draw the causes of the Characters of this Passion let 's first therefore examine moral actions There being no Passion which produceth so many different actions or causeth so many extravagancies as this it would prove a troublesome thing to enquire into them all and besides unprofitable since the greatest part of them proceed from other Passions which accompany it of which we are particularly to speak for which cause we will only touch here the principal which in my opinion are The continual thought a Lover hath of the beloved Object The high esteem he values it at The means he imploys to possesse it And the extravagancy of the words he makes use of to discover his passion for there are few actions in Love which may not be reduced to some of these four For the first although it be a thing common to all the Passions powerfully to possesse the minde and to keep it fix'd on the object which entertains them yet there are none who do it more powerfully or longer then Love For either they are impetuous or turbulent or else they are pliable and docile the first are presently dissipated and the others are to be appeased or diverted by the power of discourse nay even by other Passions So the angry ones sweeten themselves by pleasure and the delightful diminish by affliction and all of them may change into others more strong if more powerful objects then those which have raised them present themselves for a great grief makes us forget a less and an excess of joy takes away a mean one But with Love it is nothing so it hath the propriety to be vehement and long lasting not to hearken to reason and can seldom be changed or diminished by the force of what Passion soever forasmuch as the imagination is so wounded that it fancies there is no greater good to be possest and which can affoord it more contentment then its beloved object so that there is no other how excellent so ever it be that can divert its inclination and draw it to it because the soul never leaves a greater good to seek a less 't is in the same manner with displeasure for if we are beloved there is no pain nor grief which vanisheth not by the contentment which we receive thereby and if we are not as the soul knows no greater ill then that all others are too weak to dispossess that thought for which cause it continually considers the good whereof it s deprived it uncessantly desires it and seeks in the possession thereof the only remedy which may cure all its displeasures But the first origine
the eyes because they are the channels through which the Passions issue out and the hands because they are the principal organs of its actions But amongst all the means which nature hath taught us to attain to this perfect union there is none more considerable then reciprocal Love because union supposing two things the Lover and the Object to render it accomplished both the one and the other must really unite Now if the beloved object is capable of loving it can no otherways unite it self but by Love forasmuch as the soul unites it self with things which are without it only by that Passion wherefore the first care of a Lover is to make himself beloved and to that end to render himself grateful whence it happens consequently that he accommodates himself to the inclinations of the person beloved that he changeth his humor his manner of living that he growes liberal curteous neat and in a word that he doth all what he thinks may make him be beloved We are now to enquire the cause of that extravagant manner of speaking which is so particular to Lovers In general we may say that the soul in that Passion carrying it self out of its self carries also other things beyond what they are and forms thoughts of them beyond the natural expression they should have whence it is that the good and ill it conceives is alwayes in excess and if the nature of the thing cannot suffer it it burthens it with some strange Idea to encrease the meaning thereof and so builds those bold Metaphors which give to the beloved object the title of the fairest and the noblest things in the world which of a gentle heat cause a burning fire of a mean disquiet a torment and a punishment of a little submission which beauty requires a captivity prisons and chains and so of the rest whereunto the error of the imagination contributes very much which being wholly fill'd with that violent instinct which it hath from beauty beleeves that there is no greater good nor heavier ill then it expects from Love so that it alwayes represents them in extremes and consequently useth more extravagant termes then in any other Passion considering also that Lovers who commonly employ in their entertainments but very few thoughts and who are never weary to repeat them are oblig'd to diversify the termes that they may be the less tedious which they cannot do but by many Metaphors which at last become extravagant being to seek to finde out reasonable ones enough for the variety they endeavor Besides these general reasons there are yet particular ones for some words which are always in the mouths of those that love and when they call the beloved person Their Heart Their Soul and Their Life when they call them Ungrateful Homicides and Cruel and when they so often say They dye for Love for although all these kinds of expressions seem extravagant yet they come from a principle which in some sort renders them true forasumch as Love keeping the Soul always stretched towards the beloved object and transporting it out of it self to unite it thereto separates it also morally from the subject it animates and in effect takes away from it the remembrance and the cause of all that belongs to it So that in that respect we may say that it lives no more in him nor for him being wholly in the beloved person that a Lover hath reason to call her his Heart and his Soul since his desires and thoughts which are the noblest parts of his life are alone in her and that its true that he dyes nay even that he is dead since that he no longer lives in himself Now as there is but reciprocal Love only which can make them live again forasmuch as then the beloved person transforms herself in him and communicates to him both soul and life if he be unhappy to so high a degree that he cannot be loved it seems that he hath cause to call her Ungrateful Cruel and Murtheress since giving himself wholly to her alone she is oblig'd to acknowledge so high a liberality and in separating his soul from him she kills him and it is a cruelty to let him dye whose life she may save It s true that to speak really we may say that there is but a very light shadow of truth in all these words that the soul operates here as in a dream and that Platonick Philosophy which approv'd these visions kept intelligence with this Passion or would consolate Lovers in the miseries they suffered let 's leave her employed on so fair a designe and seek the causes of the corporal Characters which we have described But we will not here examine whence that great diversity comes which appears in this Passion which makes it in some either sportful or pensive in others peaceable or turbulent in a word perhaps two persons have never been found in whom it hath bin altogether alike for its evident that it comes from the divers inclinations which the temperature or custome hath introduced into the soul which draw the Passions to the bend they take and makes them follow the same course which they are accustomed to the mixture of other Passions also contribute thereunto it being impossible that Love should be frolick when it s accompanied with Grief or Anger or that it should be severe when Hope or Joy are of the party But all these diversities are easie to be comprehended let 's now to our principal designe To follow the Method we have established we are here to place two kinds of these Characters some of which are done for some certain end others which happen by a pure necessity the first are made by the souls command who judgeth them fit to execute her passion although they are often unprofitable as we have said the other are purely natural and are made without design being only effects which by a necessary consequence come from the trouble and the agitation which is inwardly made Those of the first rank are the motions of the eyes and forehead the faultring of the tongue the sweetning and several falls of the voice laughter and the behaviour of the body All the rest are purely natural as for the Motion of the eyes there are so many several kinds of it that it s almost impossible to observe them For as all the Passions may spring from Love and suffer also with it and every of them causing the eyes to move diversly It also happens that all their motions meet there So that pleasure makes them sparkle Desire advanceth them forward Grief casts them down Fear renders them unquiet Respect inclines them Despight kindles them and so of the rest whose causes we will deduce in the discourse of every Passion all what we can herein do is to enquire which are the Amorous eyes and looks and what obligeth the Soul to use them by reason of the great difficulty there is both in the one and the other For the
first there are some who beleeve that amorous eyes are those whose looks are quick and nimble and which in a moment are cast about on every side forasmuch as Aristotle speaking of lascivious eyes which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some Translators have rendred Insanos which are properly those wild eyes which are in perpetual motion But besides that they have not met with the sence of Aristotle and that he would have intimated those which he calls Devorantes of which we are going to speak its certain that those wild eyes do not become Love and are more proper for Anger Disquiet and the Lightness of the minde then for this Passion Others think them to be those whose balls lift up themselves up on high and half hide themselves under their lids which are the dying eyes because those who die commonly have them so as Aristotle has observed in his Problems where he adds that it also happens in some actions of Love But at that time the soul hath no designe to cause that motion and 't is purely a natural effect which followes the excess of pleasure as we will say in its due place for otherwise those kinde of looks are marks of Grief and Langour we might even also say that they are those urgent looks by which the eyes seem to throw themselves on their objects and as if they would as they say devour them which the Latins so happily name Instantes Procaces Devorantes but we have already said that they were bred from desire and not from Love For my part I beleeve that the eyes in question are those which the Latins call Paetos and which for the same reason they have given to Venus for they are smiling and send forth their looks as it were by stealth the lids sweetly inclining and half shutting themselves In effect there are none which have so much correspondency with the nature of Love as these have forasmuch as in one look they make known all the principal motions which are to be found in this Passion for we have made it appear that Love chiefly consisted in the interior union of the appetite with the beloved object That pleasure always accompanied it That Beauty inspired submission and respect That to Love was nothing but to dye and that if a Lover possess not the beloved person Desire incessantly solicited him Now the look whereof we have spoken makes all these motions appear for laughter is an effect of joy respect and submission inclines the lids the ball which sweetly turns towards the beloved object is a signe of that amorous languor whereof the soul is sensible and the looks it darts on it witness the Desire which provokes it In fine although the eyes half shut themselves laughter contracting the muscles of the lids yet we may say that they shut themselves so as if the soul would retain the image it newly received the more attentively to consider it and even that it would quite shut them up had it not a new one which every moment presented it self and which it would not lose but which obligeth it so to divide its cares as it often doth between Fear and Anger where it seems as if at the same time it would see and not see the ill which it either flees or disdains The Forehead in love is always clear and laughing and seems as if it opened and extended it self which is a mark of Flattery so that the Dog which is a flattering creature hath his always so when he caresseth any one as Aristotle will have it Now the word Flattery signifies nothing else here but complacencie and dearness and not that vice which is the pest of the Court and of Friendship You need not then wonder if Love being complacent and flattering disposeth thus the forehead But the first cause of this effect is the Joy which accompanieth all these Passions whose property it is to render the countenance open calm and smiling as in its place we will declare Let us pass to another effect the cause whereof is extremely hid 't is the Motion of the Tongue which often trembles between the lips and seems even to tickle them Now this happens in a great excess of Love whether it be that the ardor which this Passion kindles dries the lips and obligeth the Soul to moisten them or that the Spirits which sparkle everywhere cause the same agitation in that part which appears in all the rest of those which are very moveable or lastly whether it comes from the vehemency of the Desire for the same effect often happens to those who see another eat what they ardently desire And it seems also more befitting the appetite for meat then any other desire whatsoever as well as that humidity which comes in ones mouth as shall be said because the motion of the tongue and the humour in which it moistens it self serves to raste the aliments and to convey them into the stomack But as the Soul hath no distinct knowledge of what it doth and the violence of Passion troubles and distracts it it also happens that it employs the means necessary for one designe in another where they are useless and so doth in the desire of Beauty what it ought onely to do in that of Aliments The sweetning of the voice signifies the respect and submission of a Lover and although it be a necessary effect of Fear which straitning the passages and rendering the motion of the Lungs more loose makes the voice soft sweet and languishing even very often without any such necessity the soul hath a designe to form it so to witness its modestie and respect knowing that a strong and vehement voice is an effect of Boldness and that that which is rude and sharp follows a harsh humour which are qualities incompatible with Love and which a Lover must hide if Nature or Custom have given him them As for what concerns all the inflexions of the voice they proceed from the several motions which agitate the Soul whether it be that admiration ravish it or grief oppress it whether desire transport it or that some difficulties oppose its contentment forasmuch as in all these encounters it burdens the voice with particular accents sometimes raising it with exclamations sometimes letting it fall with languishings sometimes cutting it short and sometimes drawing it out according to the nature of the Passions it suffers Laughter being an effect of Joy is to be examined in that Passion where we will at large speak of its nature and of its causes So that we have nothing but the Gesture and the Behaviour which seem to detain us But if you observe it there is none particular to love and that which is there observable and is so changeable follows the several Passions which accompany this for sometimes Respect renders him modest Joy and Fear disquiet him and Sorrow casts him down and makes him languish sometimes a Lover is in the posture of a suppliant or a contented or of
moves it self and that infirmity looseth the speech or if we do speak it is with pain and stammering whereto the quantity of humors also contributes which through Desire fill the mouth for it hinders that the tongue cannot so easily turn it self and that it strikes not the voice clearly Besides the distraction we now speak of is also a cause that Lovers hear not half what others say and that their discourse is commonly confused extravagant Even the sighs wh ch every moment cut one another owe their first original to that great attention of spirit which diverts the soul and makes it lose the remembrance of the most necessary actions of life for sending not spirits enough to cause respiration the lungs beat but slowly and the heart draws not that help which is expected from their service forasmuch as they furnish not it sufficiently with air to temper that fire which this Passion kindles and that they discharge it not often enough of those fumes and vapors which the agitation of the humors raiseth there Now after this disorder hath continued some time and that at last it might ruine all the natural ceonomy the soul being urged by necessity awakes again and seeks to supply its defect by these great and extraordinary respirations and indeed sighs are principally begot at the issue out of some thought which hath forcibly detained the minde and not whilst it was employed therein The face grows pale whether it be that the spirits retire within the brain as we have already said or because that in the progress of this Passion the stomack grows weak and the blood changeth for since that the diversion of the spirits diverts also the heat vertue which ought to pass into the stomack to cause digestion you must not wonder if it become languishing if the aliments change into crudities and if the blood it makes be impure since that the last concoction corrects not the defects of the former But what helps forward this disorder is the continual ardor which this Passion kindles in the blood and the several agitations which Fear Grief and Anger at every moment excite for that dissipates the spirits and makes the faculties become languishing and the humors enflame and corrupt themselves which at last grows to that Erotick sickness which the Physitians place in the ranck of folly and fury The blood being then in this condition retains no more nether its vertue nor its natural colour It becomes useless to the nourishment of the parts and no longer communicates that pleasing vermillion which formerly it bestowed upon them and so they must needs become pale lean and withered By the same reason the appetite is lost because that the beloved object occupying all the thoughts of the Soul takes away its care of all the functions of Life the spirits being also diverted no longer bear into the stomack that sentiment which causeth the appetite In fine the disorder which is in the humors and in all the natural parts hinders this from performing its function Sleep being the rest of common sence of the spirits seldom happens in violent Passions detaining the Soul and the body in a continual agitation but Love endures it less then the rest because that besides the tempest it raiseth it at last corrupts the blood whose vapours are sharp and which consequently want that sweet humidity which Iulleth the Senses It s true that langour and weariness sometimes procure it because the soul knows that life cannot subsist without it and that after so great a dissipation of spirits its necessary to repair them to which end it gathers them together and stays them For although this moist vapor which commonly provokes sleep happen not here as we said but now yet must we not beleeve that sleep can come by no other means it hath two ordinary and natural causes the vapor which stops the passage of the spirits and the soul which binds and stays them now here being no vapor to produce this effect necessity obligeth the soul to labour it alone of her self But this sleep is interrupted with dreams which continually agitate the minde forasmuch as the imagination which in that condition loseth not the liberty of working and being full of those images which Passion suggests turns over continually confounds and augments them so that they always present to it things greater then in effect they are and afterwards form in the appetite more powerful motions then the true objects would do The remembrance or the unexpected arrival of the beloved party swels the heart and the pulse because the soul dilates the organs to receive the good and to send forth spirits to its encounter a great difficulty upon this occasion is proposed to wit whether Love have a kind of pulse proper to it alone for that some have vaunted the discovery of this Passion by the beating of the arteries But without stopping at the contests which are formed hereupon we will boldly say that there is no more reason to give one which is proper to Anger and to Grief then to Love That the heart can no less resent the motion which this Passion causeth in the appetite then it can that which the others excite and that the organs moving conformably to the intention of the minde this part must be otherwise agitated in Love then in other passions since it hath a diffent designe from what the others have It s true its hard exactly to discover this difference because men have made no just observation thereof and perhaps it is impossible to make it for that the heart is shut up in the Center of the Body and that it suffers motions which it communicates not with the arteries yet amongst such kinds of pulses as have been observed we may yet find some one which particularly belongs to Love To understand this you must know that the heart hath many motions which are common to several Passions for it dilates it self in Joy in Hope and in Anger and contracts it self in Grief and in Fear and in Despair in some it goes quick and with violence in others slow and languishing and its certain these general differences cannot all alone mark those which are proper to every Passion but as Physick teacheth us that there are twenty kinds of simple pulses and that they may diversly mix the one with the other every Passion may finde in this great variety that kind which is proper to it thus the pulse of Anger is not only great and lifted up or quick or frequent or vehement but it is composed of all these differences That of Fear is quick hard unequal and irregular That of Joy is great rare and slow That of Grief is weak little slow and rare and as they say these are the kindes of pulses which are proper to these Passions we may also observe in the same manner one proper to Love and indeed therein the beating of the arteries is great large unequal and irregular it
is great and large because the heart opens to receive the good which presents it self as was before said it is unequal and irregular by reason of the several Passions with which this is continually traversed for as we do not here speak of that simple and imperfect Love which is yet but in the soul but of that which is compleat and finished and which hath already made impressions on the body it is impossible but Desire and Fear Joy and Grief should at every moment confound themselves with it whence consequently happens the unequal motion of the heart and of the arteries and this is chiefly to be observed at the remembrance or unexpected arrival of the beloved person For after this first elevation which is made at this encounter it changeth a hundred wayes it appears little and languishing and immediately returns to its first vehemency from swift and light it becomes slow and heavy and all at once it reassumes its first quickness which it loseth again in an instant and passeth thus from one difference to another without order and without proportion There are but very few Characters which remain to be examined whose causes are not very evident For the disquiet comes from the divers agitations which the soul feels the shiverings and the ardors follow the flowing and ebbing of the Spirits forasmuch as Fear and Grief which retire them within take away from the exterior parts the heat they had even as Joy and Hope restore and augment it and as Boldness and Anger gather the spirits together strength also encreaseth as it diminisheth when Joy dissipates or Grief stiffles them There remaines no more difficulties to be found but in the Syncopes and Extasies which sometimes happen to Lovers but we have already shewed that Love could not alone cause Syncopes nor faintings but that it must be Grief Despair or Joy For the Extasie its true it may proceed from Love yet we must observe that the word hath divers significations the Physitians often take it for an extreme alienation of the spirit such as those have who are frantick or mad sometimes for that strange disease which they call Catoche which all at once takes away the use of sence and motion and keeps the body stiffe in the same posture in which it surprised it there are some who beleeve that the true Extasie is made when the soul doth no action in the body whether it dwell there or that indeed it issue forth for a time as it happens in those which are possest and in those who are ravished by the spirit of God but that whereof we speak is nothing else but a certain ravishment of the soul which takes from the body the use of exterior sence and motion the imagination and the understanding not forbearing to operate which happens by a strong attention which binds the soul to the beloved object which makes it lose the care of all animal functions and which imploying all the spirits in that thought hinders them from flowing to the organs of sence and motion and this ravishment may sometimes Pass to such an excess that the vital faculties may receive no more influence from the soul so that respiration will cease and that there will be onley natural vertue to sustain life PART 5. Of the nature of Beauty in general and why it begets LOVE ALthough the Senses were given to the Minde to help it to know things yet it seems that those things which are the most sensible are the least known And I know not whether it be a grace or an artifice of Nature to bring those things neerest our Senses which ought to be furthest from our Mindes and by that exteriour knowledge to recompense the little progress we might make in that which was true and essential However it be it s most evident that we are sensible of nothing in the world more then of Beauty nor nothing is more difficult to be known the greatest men who have been most sensible of its effects were ignorant of the Causes thereof and we may say that it hath made them lose their Reason when they were but touched with it and would have discoursed of it For some have said that it was a just proportion of the parts others that it was the form of things in fine that it was the splendor and glittering of Goodness it self But this last definition is equivocal and metaphorical and the other cannot be applied but to the Divine beauty which is the source and model of all Beauties forasmuch as in the Unity and infinite Simplicity of God there can be no proportion or form That we may therefore steer a more certain course then what hitherto hath been followed and that we may not wander in so vast and difficult a matter we must consider that things are not esteemed fair but as they fall under a very distinct and exact knowledge So that there are only the objects of the Understanding and of Seeing and of Hearing to which we allow Beauty because that all the Knowing faculties are those which most perfectly judge of their objects and are the least mistaken in them And these same objects which we judge Fair are also esteemed Good for we do not onely say A fair minde a fair speech or a fair colour but they may be also called good But the objects of the other Senses and all the other powers may onely be stiled Good and can never deserve the title of Fair for it were a ridiculous thing to say that heat or humidity sweetness or bitterness were fair Whence we must necessarily conclude that all what is Good is not Fair but all that is Fair is good and therefore that Fair is a species of Good Now as Good is not good but as it is agreeable the Fair since it is good must be agreeable to something and therefore if what is fair serve but for an object onely to the knowing faculties we must necessarily conclude that Fair is that which is agreeable to the intelligent faculties as good is agreeable to what ever it be Now because Knowledge hath no other object but the essence and the truth of things Beauty must needs be of that kinde and the objects must be the fairer where the essence and the truth are best exprest for which cause Souls are fairer then Bodies and the Understanding which knows interiour things is more capable to judge of Beauty then the Senses which know onely the exteriour Whence it also happens that Beasts are seldom moved by Beauty because Sense onely works in them in stead that in Man the Understanding concurs to his action and penetrates further into the Nature and Essence of its objects And we experiment in our selves that those things which we do not greatly heed and whose nature we do not well know seem less fair unto us and that its onely for Masters in an Art to judge of the beauty of a work because they alone have the true knowledge thereof
and this proportion makes corporal Beauty which is nothing but a just joyning together of all the dispositions which are necessary for bodies to perform those functions whereto they are ordained So that all the material qualities how excellent soever they be will render the subjects wherein they are deformed if they are not proportionable to the essence and to the interiour vertue which they have So the Round figure which is the most perfect of all because it is the simplest and comprehends all the rest cannot accommodate it self with the actions of all the parts of the humane body which would be monstrous and horrible had it onely that figure It is the same of the fairest Colours which have no conformity with the temperature of Man and which would make an extreme change appear in the humours if they were visible in the face The tone even of the voice which in men ought to be stronger and more resounding were a defect in a woman because it is not conformable to her temper which ought to be proportionable to the natural power of her sex This is then the reason which shews that the beauty of Sensible objects is drawn not onely from their absolute being and from the relation which they have with the organs but also the connexion which they ought to have with their subjects I speak not now of the particular sentiments we may have of Beauty nor why Red is more esteemed then Green the Brown hue more then the Vermillion and Blue eyes more then Black We have no room here for the examination of these things we do but touch on generals and we think we have satisfied our designe when we have said somewhat more of Humane Beauty because it is that which causeth the Love whereof we speak There are several sorts or divers degrees of Beauty in Man For first there is the Intelligible which is essential or accidental the Essential is considered in the Species or in the Sex the Accidental in the Habit and in the Actions Lastly there is a Sensible and Corporal Beauty The reason of this is because the species of every animal hath its beauty in it which is nothing but its being and its essence wherein are comprised all the powers and vertues due unto it But because that amongst these powers there are some which are destined for the entertainment of the Species which would be lost with the life of the creatures had not God given them the vertue to ingender their like and that generation cannot be unless there also be an active and a passive power it was necessary that there should be two Sexes between which these two powers should be divided And forasmuch as Sensible beauty is nothing but an assembling together of all corporal dispositions necessary for the powers to perform their functions every Sex must also necessarily have different dispositions since they have different powers And thence is the source whence the difference comes of Male and Femalebeauty which is not onely to be found in some parts but in the whole body Because the first qualities being the principal dispositions of these two powers and heat and driness which amongst them are the most working being obliged to accompany the active power as cold and humidity the passive power it must needs be that all the mass of humours must taste of these qualities So that the temperature of the Male being hot and dry and that of the Female cold and moist it follows that all the parts of either Sex ought to have different dispositions and beauties But forasmuch as Man hath Understanding and Reason beyond all other creatures and that that faculty being naturally capable of all things cannot have its perfection but by possessing them it must acquire dispositions necessary to attain this perfection and these are the Intellectual and Moral habits which cause that accidental and acquired Beauty of which we have spoken and which receive their last accomplishment in the actions they ought to produce for the end is the last perfection there being nothing absolutely perfect without an end and Action being the end of all things This is what we can say in general of the Name of Beauty and must be known before we seek the cause which obligeth us to the love thereof For although some have said we should not ask why Beauty pleaseth and that it was as much as if we would know why Fire warms That it is its Nature and the essential propertie it hath whereof there is no reason to be given yet all have not been of this opinion Plato did not believe that this enquiry was unworthy of his Socrates And there is no body who doth not freely confess that if the knowledge may be attained it must needs be very rare and excellent Now although I do not altogether disapprove this thought of Plato who says that the beauty of created things ravisheth us because it is a ray and an image of the Divine beauty which being Soveraignly good necessarily inspires love when it makes it self known yet as there are several things to be supposed in this opinion which the School of Aristotle will not admit and that at last we must always come to that To know wherefore the Soveraign Goodness is amiable we are obliged to take another way which may lead us to these Supreme truths We must then say that what is good and convenient to a thing perfects it for it addes what it wanted and in some manner also augments its being giving it what it had not and uniting what was divided And this is the foundation of all the inclinations which are to be found in Nature and of the love we have for all that is truly and apparently good Now as in the Knowing faculties there is nothing at all of what they ought to know the Understanding and the Senses being to their Objects what the Matter is to the Form when these Objects unite themselves to these Faculties they give them a perfection which they had not and of which they were capable And the knowledge they have of this perfection is the cause of the agreement they finde therein which is afterwards followed by that Love and Pleasure which the Appetite forms when the Understanding and the Imagination have proposed it as a thing good and convenient for them But forasmuch as there are Objects which cause more love and pleasure then others they must necessarily much more perfect the knowing faculties and it is those infallibly which are the most perfect to wit those who have the most of being and of essence as we have said because they do much more fill the natural capacity which these faculties have to know the extent of that being which serves for their object So it is onely God who can fill the understanding and give a perfect Love and Joy to the Will because it is he alone that possesseth all beeing and consequently those things which have the most of it perfect
it self desirable so that it is never content and that it is rather weary of the good which entertains it then fully satisfied therewith But we have spoken enough of the trouble it moves in the Minde let us see what it causeth in the Face There are some pleasures of which we may say the Soul is jealous which it seems she would possess in secret and which she dares not communicate to the Senses But what care soever she takes to hide them she cannot do it so well but she must discover something her retreat renders her suspected and when she would hide 't is then she the more discovers her self For the looks become fixt and staid all the body is immoveable the Senses forget their functions in fine there is a general suspension made of all the animal vertues And although at first we might doubt whether it proceeds from astonishment or grief which often produce the same effects 't is afterwards discovered by a certain gloss which remains on the face and by I know not what sweetness which it leaves in the eyes and by a light image of smiling which appears on the lips that these troublesome Passions have no share in this transport and that it comes from that inward joy which ravisheth and as it were inebriates the soul But when Pleasure hath the liberty to disperse it self abroad and that the Senses bear a part and that the Minde and the Body seem to enter again into commerce and intelligence then it is easie to know the agitation which is made in the soul by what appears in the exteriour parts You see on the face a certain vivacity a pleasing disquiet and a laughing boldness Pleasure sparkles in the eyes sweetness accompanies all their motions and when they happen to weep or to cast forth some dying looks you would say Laughter confounded it self with Tears and that Jollity mixed it self with Languishings The Forehead is in this calm and serene the eye-brows are not lifted up with wrinkles nor with clouds and it seems as if it opened and every way extended it self The Lips are red and moist and are never forsaken by smiles and that light trembling which sometimes happens to them would make one think they danced for joy The Voice becomes greater then ordinary sometimes it is resounding and it never goes out but with earnestness for there is no Passion so talkative as Joy how barren soever the Minde be what heaviness soever there be on the tongue it makes one speak continually and nothing but its own violence sometimes stops the mouth and at once cuts short the speech To conclude all the face takes an extraordinary good plight and from pale melancholy and severe which it was before it becomes ruddy affable and pleased The rest of the body is also sensible of this alteration A sweet heat vapor sheds it self thorow all its parts which swells and gives them a lively colour even they become stronger and do their actions more perfectly then they did before In effect of all the motions of the Minde there is none more a friend to Health then this so as it be not extreme It drives away sickness it purifies the blood and the spirits and renders as the Wise man says our yeers flourishing As soon as it enters the heart it swells it with great beatings it lifts up the heart by long respirations In the Arteries it causeth a large and extended pulse And yet although all these motions are made slowly and without vehemency those of the other parts are made with precipitation and vigour The head and the eyes are in a continual agitation the hands move without ceasing we go we come we leap we cannot stay in one place But it sometimes also happens that the violence of this Passion takes quite away the use of Sense and Motion it quencheth natural heat it causeth syncopes and in a moment bereaves one of life Let us then examine how it can produce so many effects so contrary and so wonderful PART 2. Of the Nature of JOY SOme perhapes may think it strange that Joy which speaks so much of it self hath not as yet told what it was but you may much more wonder that Philosophy which promiseth us the knowledge of all things falls short in this although there be nothing which endeavours more to make it self known then Pleasure It penetrates to the bottome of our soul it environs it on all sides it sollicites it by all the wayes of its knowledge it is the end of all its desires the crown of all its actions and yet for all that its nature is unknown to it and the greatest understandings which have enquired it are not agreed under what kinde it ought to be placed For some have said that Pleasure was nothing but the rest and tranquillity of the minde others that it was a Passion in which the Soul operated not and amongst those who have ranked it amongst actions some did beleeve it proceeded not from appetite but from knowledge In fine there having been some who not daring to put it in the rank of other Passions have said it was the principle of them others that it was their gender or their first species Had we not banished from our designe the wrangling and the Criticisms of the Schools we should be obliged to examine all these opinions and to seek in their ruines foundations whereon we should build the definition and Idea of Pleasure But since we have not that liberty and that we should render delight importunate and unpleasing by the length of the discourses we should use without advising with any we will consult the thing it self and see whether it will discover it self to us after having hid it self to so many excellent spirits We say then that we need not doubt but that Pleasure is a motion of the mind and that its impossible to conceive a calm and rest in the tempest which it raiseth in our thoughts in our spirits and in our humors as those things doe not move of themselves it must be the minde which agitates them and she gives her self the same shake which she imprints in them For it is evident that effects being like their causes the motions of the body which are the effects of the minde ought also to be the images of the agitation she gives her self I know well that the Schooles will not call these agitations true motions but that stops us not it will suffice that they are such as the soul can have that pleasure is one of that order But yet as she hath two parts which may be moved we might doubt to which of the two Pleasure belongs for although all the world confess it is a Passion and consequently a motion of the appetite yet it seems that there are some which are proper to knowledge since the Senses and the understanding finde a complacency in the objects which are conformable to them even before that the appetite is moved
a joyful man for you will finde therein I know not what kinde of a more pleasing vivacity a clearer and purer splendor and a sweeter heat then in all the Passions we have made mention of by reason that the purity of the spirits is not changed by those sharp and darksome fumes which are raised in the rest and that their motion is more free more equal and more conformable to their nature it might be asked whether this effusion of spirits be onely made in those places where Good is presented to the soul and truly it s there only necessary for it since they onely disperse themselves to possess this good and that good toucheth it nowhere but where it makes it self known yet it is true that it abundantly pours them into the intrails and that when Joy is high there is no part which it over-flowes not for which cause the heart and the lungs loosen themselves as Hippocrates says we are sensible of I know not what pleasing emotion which moves all the interior parts and a sweet heat and vapor which disperseth it self through the whole body Now this happens according to my opinion from that the sensitive soul hath not always a clear and certain knowledge of its object and being charmed by that of Joy she fancies that she ought everywhere to encounter it and that she ough also to send spirits every way to entertain it or rather the urgency which presseth her forwards to the quick enjoyment of the presented good is the reason she drives them on all sides without choice or order or so much as discerning the places whether they are to move This shall suffice for the knowledge of the Motion of the spirits in Joy in pursuit of the examen we have already made in the Treatise of Love But one difficulty remaines which the former discourse hath bred and whose resolution will give some light to the obscurity of this matter for we have said that the spirits are not agitated here with violence and that their motion is always sweet and calm although this seem not to agree with the transports the ravishments and the excesses which are so common in this Passion and which cannot be conceived without a violent agitation of the spirits And in effect when we compared this motion with that which is made in Love we were not afraid to say that they were driven in Joy as a great wave and that it seemed then as if the soul would cast it self wholly and all at once before its object So that it being not to be done without violence and having certified that there was none in the effusion of the spirits we cannot escape the reproach to have spoken contrary to Truth and against Our Selves Yet it is very easie to answer this Objection remembring that Joy and Love are inseparable and that these two Passions being for that cause often considered as if they were but one onely these Motions were also confounded with their effects so that Love drawing the spirits from the heart and driving them out we commonly say that Joy also transports them And as this motion is made with violence and causeth troublesome accidents the same thing may be said of Joy For thus we discoursed of it in the former Chapter where we did not absolutely compare Love with Joy but onely the love of Beauty with the love of other things wherein Joy causeth faintings and syncopes confounding as commonly they do these two Passions in one But here where we make an exact Anatomy of them we separate the motions of the one from the other and conclude that the transport of the spirits towards Good is a particular effect of Love and that the effusion which follows it is that of Joy So that if there be violence in the first motion it proceeds all from Love Pleasure hath no share in it and how impetuous soever it be it must break and soften it self when the spirits begin to disperse themselves otherwise Joy would destroy it self by that troublesome sensibleness which that impetuous and turbulent motion would excite in the parts Yet it follows not that because this effusion is not violent and impetuous it must be made slowly for the spirits are such stirring and subtil bodies that they without resistance penetrate everywhere and their motions are so quick that nothing in Nature could be found to compare them to but Light and it is by that also that we can make appear how they disperse themselves in Joy For it in a moment insinuates it self in Diaphanous bodies without violence and without confusion runs thorow all their parts without constraint dilates and extends it self and we might say that had these bodies any knowledge they would be sensible of an extreme pleasure in that sweet although sudden effusion of Light So is it with that which is made in Joy for after the soul hath carried the spirits towards its Good and that she believes she hath united them together she leaves that pressing that disquiet and precipitation which she caused before that she might arrive there and thinking she can then with security enjoy the good she possesseth she with liberty dilates her self without hinderance extends her self and in an instant penetrates all the parts of her object causing the spirits to move in the same manner which she findes always obedient to her command It is true that in pursuit thereof there is a great dissipation of them made which the soul takes no care to repair being wholly employed in the enjoyment of the good she pursued and being as it were charmed and ravished with her good fortune whence those weaknesses follow those faintings and those other actions of which we have already spoken PART 4. The causes of the Characters of Joy YOu have seen what we had to say of the nature of this Passion before we enquire the causes of those Characters which make it appear Let us then now examine first the Moral actions and enquire why Joy is so talkative so vain and so credulous why it confides so much in it self why it makes it self to be defired even when it is present and why it is so soon weary of the Good which begot it For these are the most observable effects which it produceth in the Minde and whence it seems the rest proceed Let us seek then the causes of its Prattle There are Passions which will always speak and others which love to be silent Silence commonly accompanies grief despair and fear Joy boldness and anger and generally all those which move towards Good or resist Ill are given to Talk but none so much as Joy all the rest seem to drive out their words and cast them forth with violence as if they were a burden which the soul would discharge this dispenseth them with liberty makes them flow with pleasure and we may say that it is rather abundance then constraint which sends them forth Indeed Joy is full of babble is pleased to
which is extended and made smoothe by their contraction All Caresses are not properly effects of Joy Take but away the serenity of the countenance the smile and the sweetness of the eyes the rest proceed from the Passion of Love which subjects the soul to the good which it conceives and fills it with a desire to possess it For the offers of service respectful complements and civilities are so many marks of submission which it renders to the perfection and excellency of the person it loves and the embraces kisses and amorous looks are witnesses of its desire and of the care it takes to unite it self thereunto For Laughter although it seem to be a particular effect of Joy yet it is not always to be found with it And when it accompanies it it ows not its birth to it alone there are other causes which contribute thereunto and which excite an emotion in the Soul quite different from that of Pleasure So that we were not afraid to call it a Passion not considering the outward motion onely which appears on the face but that which the soul inwardly suffers the nature and effects whereof we will examine in the following Chapter There remains now the Disquiet and Impatience onely whose causes we are to enquire But we must first observe that they are not in all kinde of Joy there are calm Pleasures wherein the soul feels nothing of Impatience wherein we may say she rests in her motion Such are those which accompany the exercise of Vertue the knowledge of the Sciences and the possession of Supernatural good In a word pure and true Delights do never disquiet the soul they always leave a calm and a pleasing serenity And although they often moves desires which agitate it we may say they are little windes which purifie it without causing any storms or that they are like those sweet smoaks which the flame raiseth which nourish it in stead of dissipating it and which rather entertain the equality of its motion then disturb it But it is not so with false delights As by little and little they make themselves felt and seen as a remedy for grief there must until they are wholly possest always remain somewhat which is displeasing in the Minde And then you cannot wonder if Impatience accompany the desires it hath to be delivered from it and to see it self enjoying that perfect pleasure wherein the end of its grief consists But it foresees not that its contentment is to finish there also and that assoon as it hath an entire possession of the Good it seeks it will be disgusted So that being not to be satisfied it cannot but suffer perpetual disquiets seeking what it cannot finde and meeting what it never sought Besides all these vain hopes which Joy inspires breed divers designes and as it runs from one to another without stopping at any it is impossible in this agitation but that all its actions must appear uuquiet its discourse without order its looks inconstant all the body in a continual motion whereunto also the sparkling of the spirits contributes which tickles the nerves and sollicities the parts to move themselves considering also that those Pleasures cannot be had but by the action of the corporal powers which at last tire themselves disquiet must accompany them since its an effect of wearisomeness These are the Characters which Joy imprints in the body by the souls command Now let us see those which are caused without her ardors and which by a necessary consequence proceed from the agitation which is made in the humors and in the spirits The vivacity of the eyes comes from their splendor and motion which are the undoubted signes of life and vigour since death renders them obscure and fixt as the Spirits then disperse themselves in Joy and as they are luminous and active the eyes which abundantly receive them and which are transparent and easie to move become agile and resplendent besides that the humidity which is spred over them being agitated by the motion they make the light becomes more trembling and causeth a certain moving luster which strikes the sight with several rays and presents to the imagination the motion and noise which the sparkes of fire cause at their birth whence they are said to crackle Now this humidity may come from two causes either because the lids in shutting themselves crush the humors they contain and render the eyes moist as we will more particularly shew in the discourse of Laughter Or because that heat and the spirits open their passages and dissolve those humors which afterward runs on the parts and make them moist nay even if the brain be very moist thence they draw rivulets of tears which are as they say quite different from those which Grief useth to move not only in their cause but even in their quality for they are cold in Joy and hot in grief although it seems as if the contrary should happen since Joy heats and Grief cooles and that hath even obliged some to say that the teares of Joy were warm but it is easie to agree and give a reason for the difference by saying that the tears which Joy sheds are truely cold in comparison of others but that they seem colder because they run down a face which that Passion hath heated by the effusion of spirits On the contrary those of Grief are colder in effect but as they fall on the cheekes which the flight of spirits hath deprived of heat they seem to be hotter in the same manner as hot water affoords divers sentiments of hot and cold according as the hand is hotter or colder But of this more exactly hereafter in the discourse you have of Tears For that redness that good case and that vaporous heat which appears through the outward parts they also proceed from that effusion of spirits which draw along with them the blood and the sweetest vapours which raise themselves in the veins and swell the parts they arrive at colouring them vermillion and inspiring them with a sweet and moist heat The trembling of the lips comes also from the Spirits which abundantly flowing into those parts which are soft and suspended agitate them with the motion they have and make them appear trembling as it happens to leaves which are shaken with the winde or with rain The voice grows fuller because the muscles which serve to form it are loosned by heat and give it a greater and larger passage it is true that it sometimes becomes sharp and shrill but that is the effect of a vehement laughter which contracts the muscles streightens the conduit of the voice or else of impatience or some other impetuous Passions which mingle themselves with it and oblige the soul to drive it out with violence it often stops it self all at once by the souls ravishment which causeth it to forget the most part of its ordinary functions and leaves the organs of the voice without motion and without action
them for I cannot imagine that Nature who is so regular and so uniform in all its other actions should forget it self in this that she would give several causes to one effect and that it being true that all kinde of Laughter hath somewhat that is common the soul should have no general motive for so common and general an action We must then endeavour to discover it and if we do not succeed use the same excuses which the difficulty of the enquiry afforded those who made it before us since perhaps there is nothing in nature whose knowledge is more hid then that of this Whereunto that we may attain we must first consider that we never laugh but when the soul is in some manner deceived and surprised as may be seen in all the ridiculous actions which Aristotle calls deformities without grief since they are all against the custome against the expectation and against the sence of the Wise It is the same thing in the unexpected encounter of a pleasing thing and in an injury which we receive from a man we did beleeve ought not to offend us in the good or in the ill which happens to those who are worthy of it For there is therein every way somewhat which by its novelty surpriseth the minde which is to be found even in tickling whence it comes to pass that we laugh not when we tickle our selves because we are not new nor strange to our selves Yet this surprise must be light for if it be violent it astonisheth the minde and so powerfully averts it that it cannot go to the outward parts to make them move So that objects which are very wonderful and extremely pleasing move us not to laughter but to ravishment and extasies as terrible ones cause fear and astonishment 't is not that we say that the lightest surprise is that which moves laughter the more it is onely to be understood in comparison of that which astonisheth or ravisheth the minde for it is evident that the greater so as it do not disturb and carry away the spirit will cause the more vehement laughter making not only the muscles of the face move but even those of the flanks and brests as in its place hereafter This surprise must also be pleasing and those ridiculous objects must produce some kinde of Joy in the soul It is manifestly sensible in facetious things and in the encounter of friends and we never seek the occasions of laughing but for the pleasure we think to finde therein And although we may doubt of that Laughter which indignation scorn and anger sometimes move yet we will shew that nevertheless there is still somewhat which affords contentment either true or feigned for it is certain there is a lying and dissembled Laughter wherein effectually there is no sensible pleasure and in which we onely feign we receive some which is very common in flattery and complacency Often even although the object be pleasing the soul will finde in it more pleasure then it is capable to yeeld and so moves and as they say tickles it self into a Laughter But what I esteem most considerable to understand the nature of Laughter it is that we seldom use it alone and that the most part of those objects which powerfully excite it in company move it not at all in a solitude so that it seems company affords somewhat to its production that the soul will make it appear that she is surprised which would be needless were there no witness of what she would do so that she ought not to move Laughter when we are alone And if in company there happen a pleasant surprise which moves it not it is because she will not make it appear as when there is somwhat that displeaseth her or when prudence or dissimulation hinder it Yet must we not believe that she makes use of laughter as a mark taken at pleasure such as those are which proceed from our choice and invention but as a natural mark which hath a necessary connexion with the emotion she represents To know what this connexion is and the particular reason which obligeth the Soul to use this motion rather then another to mark the surprise she is in you must suppose that in all surprises the Soul retires and reenters her self the encounter of an unthought-of thing opposing it self to the liberty of her thoughts and forcing her to recollect her self the better to discern the presented Object and then if she intend to make her condition known she must according to the Law which proportions the organs and the effects to their causes stir up in the outward parts some motion like unto that which she suffers and consequently cause the muscles to retire towards their origine as she retires and recollects her self in her self Now because the Minde may be surprised by troublesome objects as well as by pleasing ones this retraction of the muscles may be as well with grief as with joy and indeed you see that in Tears the lips and some other parts of the face retire in the same manner as in Laughter Whence it is that there are persons in whom it would be difficult to discern at first sight the one from the other so like they are to one another which hath made some think that Nature who begins our life with crying and tears made an essay and designed these touches which were to be perfected in Laughter which is never formed before fourty days after birth Yet as we can never say that the retraction of the lips which accompanies grief is a true Laughter so we must thence conclude that Laughter consists not in the simple motion of the muscles but that there is also a certain air which Joy sheds over the face and which causeth the principal difference However it be Laughter being principally destin'd for conversation the objects which particularly respect it are those also which the most easily cause Laughter Such are the actions and facetious words which comprehend all what is uncomely and deformed light hurts purposely done or received out of folly cheats of small consequence jeers in a word all deformities without grief for all these things move Laugher forasmuch as they mark the defects of those qualities which are necessary for conversation as of a good grace of decency of advisedness of kindness and of the rest the Minde finding it self surprised when it sees contrary actions to those vertues which are the foundations of society and of a civil life All the difficulty which there is herein is to know why the Soul would have the surprise it suffers in these encounters appear for it seems as if it were a defect which she would do better to hide then to discover In effect it is a badge of Ignorance to suffer our selves to be surprised with a Novelty as it is a mark of Malice to be pleased at the defects of others Whence it is that Wise men laugh seldomer then others because that they are
which contracts the muscles towards their principle the soul using that exterior motion to shew that which it suffers interiourly because as we have said she retires into her self when she is surprised so that this contraction of the muscles is as the spring of all the other effects of laughter And perhaps there is no other made by the souls command all the rest being of necessity and without design For it is very unlikely that the soul should intend to form all those plights and wrinkles which are to be at the corners of the eyes to hold the eyes half shut and the mouth open to render the voice piercing and interrupted and so of the rest But these are effects which by a necessary pursuit accompany the motion of the muscles The better to understand this you must remember from what we have already said that when the surprise is light the muscles of the lips forehead and lids onely move because the Soul intending to make the emotion it feels appear useth this as the most manifest and most sensible motion But when the Surprise is great it moves all the muscles of the face and brest and in fine if it be very vehement there are none in the whole body which are not moved Now as there are but few muscles which have not their contraries and that there are some which lift up a part or carry it on one side there are also those which bring it down and draw it on the other side And yet in this contrariety of motion there are some stronger then others the actions they are to perform requiring more or less strength From thence it comes that in Laughter you see the parts take that figure which this contrariety of motions gives them So the Mouth keeps half open because the muscles which serve to open and shut it each moving his way it must necessarily retain that figure and even it must appear more shut then open because the muscles which serve to shut are the strongest So the Forehead remains smoothe and stretched being equally drawn upwards and downwards The Eyes also are half shut because the muscles which incline the lids are stronger then those which lift them up and so consequently the wrinkles are formed about the temples the skin which is delicate and fleshless being drawn by the motion of those muscles and constrained to grow uneven The Nose shrinks up and grows sharp because the muscles which lift it up having no contraries have always the liberty to lift it up which cannot be done but that the skin which covers them must wrinkle and the extremity of the Nose appear sharp The Lips lengthen out themselves because the muscles which draw them on the side are stronger then those which contract them and even the upper lip stretcheth it self more then the under because its muscles are more powerful The Tongue shortens it self a little and suspends it self being equally drawn on either side The Neck contracts and thickens it self because the muscles shorten when they retire themselves The Cheeks for the same reason lift themselves up and grow firmer and in some a little dent is formed in the middle of them the skin being tied in those parts by some small veins which restrain it whilst the surrounding parts lift themselves up Before we seek the causes of the brests and flanks motions and of that interrupted voice which appears here we must observe that the muscles do not retire themselves in a vehement laughter by an uniform and continued contraction but by several girds and shakes whether it be that in the designe the Minde hath to witness its surprise it moves it self and redoubles its struglings or that the novelty of the object sollicites it and by fits represents it self unto it as it chanceth to be in other Passions wherein every moment the soul animates and transports it self by those new Idea's which the object forms in the Fancie This then is the reason why those redoubled motions appear in Laughter and chiefly in the flanks by reason of the Diaphragma which is there situated and which is extremely moveable And because the agitation is violent it causeth also a pain in this part whither the hands cast themselves as if they ought to ease it For although they unwittingly do it Nature who takes care for the preservation of its parts directs the hands to those places where the ill may offend them without being led thither by Reason or Discourse So when a man falls or is ready to receive a blowe the hands by a natural instinct cast themselves presently before the face As for the rest as the Diaphragma is the chief organ of respiration that must necessarily be made with the same shakes which that part suffers and afterwards the voice must be interrupted because the air issues not equally and the muscles which should form it start up as the Diaphragma doth For we said that all the muscles retired themselves by surprises in a vehement laughter Whence it happens that the head the shoulders and the arms shake themselves in the same fashion as the flanks do In fine this general contraction which is made in all the organs of voluntary motion is the cause that all the body folds up and contracts it self that it is impossible to swallow any thing because the muscles which serve for that action contract and shut up their passages and that Laughter sometimes causeth the same effects as Medicines do by the compression of those parts which contain the humours Now forasmuch as these frequent girds of the Diaphragma hinder the liberty of respiration and are the cause it cannot contract and enlarge it self as it ought thence it comes that at last breath and speech is lost that the pulse grows irregular weakness follows and sometimes death For respiration is so necessary for life that when it is hindered the forces are lost and the whole oeconomy of Nature changed For which cause in this necessity the soul struggles very much to oppose this disorder sometimes she makes haste to draw a great quantity of air as if she stole that refreshment from the violence of her passion sometimes she makes a long breathing to drive away those fumes which the heat of the heart at every moment produceth and so forms those precipitated sobs and sighs which mingle themselves with Laughter I do not stay particularly to examine why the Pulse beats irregularly nor why weakness and syncopes happen in this encounter It is well known that the Pulse and Respiration follow one the other being both destined to one end and that weakness and faintings come from the disorder which is made in the heart which cannot suffer a greater then the hinderance of respiration Before we end this enquiry it will not be amiss to rehearse the opinions which have been hitherto held touching the motion of the muscles in Laughter because the absurdities in them will the more confirm the causes we have deduced All who
impatient in their actions although it be the most moderate and the calmest of all the Passions of the Minde It is easie to discover the cause of its moderation after having shewed how it moves the Soul and the Spirits for it is impossible it should keep them stiff and stable as it doth and that it should be subject to those agitations which are abservable in other Passions On the contrary those languishing and impetuous ones which mix with it assume a conformable mediocrity to that kinde of motion which suspends the soul between ardor and neglect as we have already said wherefore it enfeebles the Desire when it is too ardent and stirs it up when it is remiss it is a spur to Laziness and a bridle to Violence it hinders Boldness from being rash and takes off the transports of Joy and if it chance to be with Fear and with Grief it so moderates them that they fail not of their courage and refuse not to admit of the sweetest Passions But whence comes it then that it renders men rash vain and impatient How can Anger and Fury be compatible with it And if it excite and animate the Courage and the Desires how doth it beget Negligence and Idleness And yet we cannot doubt but that in some sort it is the cause of all these effects But they also who will consider the manner of their production will confess that it is neither the nearest nor even the true cause For Hope indeed begets Boldness but afterwards Boldness runs to Temerity it excites and awakens the Desires but these bring Disquiet and Impatience with them it brings Joy with it but aftewards Joy flees into raptures and extasies it inspires the Appetite with Revenge which is afterwards converted into Fury Finally it gives Confidence and that begets Presumption vanity and the scorn of all things which may traverse our designes whence after Negligence and Laziness are bred So that all these defects come not immediately from Hope but from the other Passions which accompany it And it is clear that when these are raised to this excess it quite vanisheth or becomes extremely weak For when we are sensible of a great Joy at that very moment we have no sense of Hope it scarce appears in violent Desires nor in the transports of Anger the soul suffering her self to be born away by the particular motions of those Passions And Presumption it self which seems nothing but an excess of Hope wholly ruines it imagining that there are no difficulties which can oppose its designes for where there is no more a difficulty there remains no Hope However it be Boldness is easily joyned with Hope because the Soul having confirmed her self by this to the resistance of difficulties is already in state to assault them if they appear very strong and if she betake her self to consider the danger wherein they may cast her for want of fighting and overcoming them Besides that the good opinion she hath of her strength heightens her Courage and perswades her that it is not enough to maintain the defensive part but we must pursue and assault our enemy If her forces are not proportionable to this good opinion and that she believes them greater then in effect they are thence ariseth Presumption which joyned with Boldness reacheth to Temerity and thence grows Insolence in the same manner as with Joy she begets Vanity Prattle and Importunity as in its place we shall further shew Impatience raigns powerfully in this Passion Forasmuch as it commonly accompanies Joy Desire and Fear there is always somewhat of these three mixt with Hope and even they are often found all together So that we must not wonder if we are unquiet when we hope whether it be from the apprehension we have that we shall not soon enough possess the good we expect or from the urgency of pressing desires or from the sparkling which accompanies pleasure There is no Passion so credulous as Hope for others give credence onely to the Good or Ill proposed but this equally gives in Both. Indeed pleasing things onely perswade Joy Love and Desire those which are troublesome make no impression on them without destroying them On the contrary Ill onely is resented by Grief Fear and Despair Good hath neither audience nor admittance among them But Hope hearkens to both of them forasmuch as being in the midst between both it easily inclines towards those extremities and she no sooner believes what favours her designes but she hearkens to what renders them impossible The Corporal characters which are found in this Passion are of two kindes as in all the rest The one by the command of the Soul the others by Necessity The motions of the head brows eyes and voice and of all the body are of the first rank The rest are in the form of ordinary effects The body sets it self upright the head is lifted up the brows are raised for the same intention For the Soul which would obtain the good and resist the difficulties which oppose it puts it self in posture to do both Now besides that this posture is advantagious for to see afar off what may happen it is so also in pursuance of Good or in defence of Ill if one be assaulted by it it is the most natural situation which bodies require for action it is the motion which begins all other actions of creatures whether to pursue pleasing things or to flee or assault ill ones the first thing they do is to lift up the head and the body The Soul now putting her self in posture of defence disposeth thus of those organs that she may not be surprised and raiseth them to make them the firmer as in Despair and in Fear where she slackens her self she bows the body hangs the head and casts down the eyes and brows An assured countenance is made by a wide opening of the eye-lids with vivacity A fixt and stedfast look it is common to Anger Impudence Boldness and Hope yet with this difference that in Anger the eyes are too ardent too open in Impudence and too rude in Boldness But in Hope they have none of these defaults all is therein moderate and it seems as if sweetness and severity were confounded together in all its motions The eyes then are more open then ordinary the better to see the good and the difficulties which present themselves The stedfastness of the looks is a signe that impediments astonish not the Minde and that it believes it shall overcome them The vivacity of the eyes comes from the Spirits which Desire hath driven to these parts or which Joy hath there dispersed In fine sweetness and severity are therein mixt together because that at the same time the soul sees the Good and the Ill and is touched both with the one and the other and is not so sure to obtain what she pretends to but that she still hath cause to doubt of it This Passion often also makes a man turn up
with violence and did you feel his Pulse you would easily judge by the greatness swiftness and vehemency of it that the Soul hath none of its powers which are not employed in this Passion But let us finish his Picture with this Combate neither is there ought else to be described therein but either his Victory or his Loss which can add nothing to the Characters of Boldness but those of Joy or of Grief Let us therefore seek the causes of all these effects in the Nature of this Passion CHAP. II. Of the Nature of Boldness THe Soul proposeth not more difficulties in forming Boldness The Difficulty that is in defining of Boldness then the Minde encounters for attaining the knowledge thereof It must combate monsters and assault whole Armies to acquire this knowledge and at a less rate then to be of its party it 's impossible to resist so many opinions and so many errors which have hid or corrupted its Nature In effect there is none of the Passions which hath more divided mens minds which hath been more diversly defined and of which more strange and more different pictures have been made For there have been some so extravagant that they would not have placed it in the rank of Passions beleeving that to be bold was nothing but to despise danger or not at all to fear it And that Scorn being an effect of Judgment and want of Fear a privation neither of them could be a motion of the Appetite but who can believe that a man that assaults his Enemy scorns him Contrariwise if he scorned him he would not assault him since we never assault but those things which may hurt us and we despise those onely which can do neither good nor hurt And again who will beleeve that not to fear is to be bold since stupidity and sleep take away fear without making us bold Others affirm it to be onely a powerful desire to assault and overcome what is hurtful but since we do not desire to assault any more when we have once effectually done it in such an encounter Boldness must cease to be since then even the desire ceaseth yet it 's certain that Boldness continues and augments its self even in fight Others will have it nothing but a great and a strong Hope but besides that there are great hopes often found without any Boldness what would you say of a Slave whose Masters goodness hath given him a very great and most assured hope of his liberty would he then have a very great Boldness To what purpose should he imploy his Courage must it be to combate his good fortune or to assault his succeeding ill hap There are others which call it a resolution of Courage which makes a man promise himself power enough to overcome the mischiefs which threatens him that he without astonishment sees them come neither is he frighted when they are come But besides that resolution is an effect of judgment and not of the Appetite and that often without being bold we are not astonished at the danger because we know it not All the utmost endeavor of this Boldness seems to be imployed to bear misfortues without daring to assault them and yet this is the most noble and perhaps the onely imployment it can have Besides this they will have that one of the Passions of the Soul must fortifie it and render it assured against all those ills which are to be shunned with most difficulty and encourage it to pursue those goods which are acquired with the greatest pains But force and assurance belong not to the Appetite and instead of being the effects of Boldness they are rather the causes of it for the Soul must feel it self strong and assured before she engage herself in Boldness To say also with the Schools that it is a motion which the Appetite makes to obtain a good which is to be acquired with difficultie it 's to be ignorant of the true object of Boldness which obligeth it self to peril and danger It is to confound it with Hope and with Anger even also with Fear which according to their Maxims are also motions of the Soul to obtain a difficult good To conclude what definition soever may be given if it express not the particular motion which the Appetite suffers in this Passion it doth disguise it instead of making it known and rather presents us with the shadow and fantasm of Boldness then shews what it truly is Let 's therefore endeavor to discover it and without staying to observe the ill ways let 's conduct the Reader into that which is the best and most assured To this purpose we must suppose a thing known to all the World That Ill is the object of Boldness That true Boldness is stirred up at the sight of danger that Combates Shipwracks Precipices and death it self are the most worthy objects which imploy it In short that she appears most where the difficulties are greatest and where she thinks to finde most resistance Now as we said in the discourse of Hope the difficulties and the ills appear unto the Soul either greater or lesser then her forces if they are greater she flies them if less she scorns or else she assaults them And truly the Schools say not enough when they establish it for a Maxime That the Soul hath but two sorts of motions the one by which she pursues good and the other whereby she flies ill for she is not in a worse condition then other things of Nature which have not onely an inclination to seek what is fit for them and flye what is hurtful but they also have that to destroy what is contrary unto them However it be it 's certain that the Soul flies not all kinds of ill that there are some which it assaults and that if there be any Passion which it employs to execute so noble a design it ought to be Boldness Now because that when an assault or a combate is to be made That the Ill must be present the ill must needs be present otherwise the endeavor which were to be made would be vain and useless It thence follows that the difficulties and dangers ought to be present which stir up this Boldness for if we consider them as absent they may then perhaps oblige the Soul to prepare it self and to put it self in a condition to resist it when it presents it self But they cannot draw from her any endeavor to assault them for as much as the presence of the Enemy is absolutely necessary when we ought to fight then indeed it may be an Assurance a Confidence a Resolution of Courage but not a Boldness In effect the order which the Soul observes to form this Passion is to consider the evil to come and to compare its forces with her own and then having found hers great enough to surmount them she forms a desire of fighting and a hope of Victory and at the same time she prepares herself for
or constantly to suffer its encounters and violence without making any other effort properly are not the effects of Boldness but of another Passion which we call Constancy or staiedness of Courage of which in the following Chapter As for the second it 's most certain that there are those which run into dangers without knowing it and that in such an encounter the Soul needs not assault the ill seeing it sees it not but neither then is there Boldness For as no man will say that a blind man is bold when he passeth a precipice which he thinks not of nor that a Childe is couragious that will touch the flame and take up coals of fire being ignorant of the effects thereof It 's the same of any other who goes or lights into dangers which are unknown to him He will onely appear Bold to such as are like him blind or ignorant In a word the Appetite moves not it self but through knowledge and when that enlightens it not it remains immoveable and forms no Passion It must have an object to raise it and if there be any which it knows not of it is no more touched with it then if it were not at all So that the danger which is unknown to him is to him no danger and therefore he neither flies nor assaults it and hath neither Fear nor Boldness for it It 's true that those who are in that condition do often seem to be bold because we see them in the midst of dangers without astonishment that difficulties stop them not and that they march with assurance through those obstacles which present themselves before them but indeed are not such as they appear and they are rather possest with blindness and stupidity then with true Boldness Yet it 's that wherein we are most commonly deceived forasmuch as it is nothing easie to discern those deceitful signs from those which are true and chiefly when the Soul is agitated by some ardent Passion for carrying her with precipitation whether she would go she takes from her the thought of all what may cross her and makes her run after her object without regarding the lets and dangers she meets in her way Now it 's certain that then it seems to be Boldness which inspires her with that ardor and which gives her those noble motions Although in truth it is not she but the impetuosity of the Passion which transports her And it is thus that the ambitious the proud and the voluptuous seem bold in several occasions whereas in effect they are nothing so because that not considering the difficulties which are in the pursuit which they make afree Honors and Pleasures they neither see them nor do they assault them And without doubt we are to place in this rank the most part of those who fear not dangers being accustomed thereunto as Souldiers and Seamen or having never tried them like those who engage themselves in great undertakings the difficulties whereof they never foresaw or because they beleeve that they are not threatned by them as such as think themselves far off such as are happy such as are good men forasmuch as honest men fear nothing For it 's certain that in the most part of those encounters Boldness is not if you take it for a Passion Forasmuch as to some dangers are not known to be so and to others they are reputed so although they be absent Now so it is that unknown or absent ill raiseth not Boldness and therefore it is not really to be found in those we have now observed unless as a disposition or a Habit. But we will have another touch upon this Subject How Impudence assaults ill Let 's now see how Boldness which is to be found in Impudence may assault ill since we cannot now say what we have said before that it may be taken for a Habit or for a disposition since Impudence is a Passion composed of the other two to wit Pleasure and Boldness So that if there be nothing to be fought against in Impudence there is some Boldness which as a Passion is not obliged to assault it Certainly to be Impudent we must know the action we do is contrary to civility and honesty otherwise it were folly or brutality and not Impudence For a Childe a Blockhead one that is senceless is never esteemed impudent forasmuch as they know not what actions are uncivil He therefore that knows them and hath an intention to do them at that time feels in himself the reason which opposeth it and the honor which defends him to execute it Now all what opposeth it self to the Appetite is an obstacle against it and seems unto it as an evil and yet Reason Honor and Modesty are the Enemies which Impudence assaults which she fights with which she triumphs over But we will examine this more particularly in discovering of this Passion It 's sufficient to shew That there is no Boldness which assaults not true or apparent ill We have nothing more to enquire What the ill is which Soldness asaults but whether all sorts of ill can raise this Passion for besides that it is not said that there is Boldness in fighting with Enemies which are weak nor that any ought to accuse his ignorance impudence or other defects which may be numbered amongst the greatest ills which can happen Besides these and many other such like reasons which might be produced on this subject I say there is no likelihood that what is properly ill should move this Passion since that is nothing but a privation of perfection and that the soul nor ought nor can assault what is not To resolve this difficulty we must observe that the Soul acknowledgeth not only this privation which we have spoken of to be an ill but even all the causes which it produceth and all those disorders which customarily follow it For there ever is some weakness or some inconvenience which follows the privation or absence of a perfection and this weakness or impotency is a real quality as the Schools teach us we may therefore say that Privation which is a Non ens is not an object which can excite Boldness because the Soul cannot assault what is not unless she fancy it as if it were a real thing as it is with Children who conceive death as a fantasm That if there be any ill which she ought to combate it 's those causes which she brings forth and the inconveniences which follow And truly she commonly confounds those two things with the ill it self for when we say a man suffers death with courage we do not precisely understand it of death for as yet it is not but of the action of those causes which destroy life and of the grief which they raise and when with constancy we support the loss of goods of honor or of health it is not properly the loss which occupies the constancy but the impotency the imcommodity and the affliction which are derived from thence
Body Those of the first order which accompany Boldness are truly very numerous as may be seen in the description we have made of a Bold man but we may reduce them to certain principal Heads the knowledge of which will easily bring us to that of the rest For he that shall know why a Bold man Hopes and why he is a lover of Glory will at the same instant know the cause of the greatest part of the other effects which Boldness produceth and which in some sort depend from those two Let 's then begin with Hope which ever precedes Boldness and never abandons it Hope always accompanies Boldness Certainly it 's nothing difficult to give the reason thereof for after having shewn that to form Boldness the Soul must know and measure its Forces that she must beleeve them greater and more powerful then those of the Enemy and afterwards she must employ them against him that she may vanquish him It 's impossible but she must hope for the Victory since she desires it and that in her judgment she hath all what is necessary for the obtaining thereof Perhaps some will say that there are many who fight without hope of conquest it 's true but also Boldness which is employed in such fights is not found in the sensitive Faculty nor is it of the common order of the Passions It 's particular to a man whose reason prepareth often other designs then those which Nature and the Sences are wont to inspire in Animals For its certain that they never assault any thing which they beleeve not they shall conquer and if sometimes they are forced to combate Enemies which they did not dare to assault or even before whom they had already been put to flight it 's the fear they have of falling into a greater danger which awakes their Courage reanimates their Force and so brings to life again the hope of overcoming those to whom they had yeelded before But it is not so with men who often engage themselves in Combates and cast themselves into dangers out of which they never hope to come with any advantage and even where they know their loss is certain because Reason proposeth them a more considerable end then the Victory would afford them and obligeth them to undertake impossible things to gain honor and other goods which always follow generous actions But if in these encounters they despair of over-coming the Enemy which assaults them they still hope to vanquish those difficulties which inviron the glory they aspire unto and we may say they yeeld a small Victory to gain a greater and hazard a little to gain much But in the following Chapter we shall again touch this subject It 's sufficient to have here shewn that in Boldness there is still Hope enough and that a Bold man is never without Hope Now the same principle from whence we have drawn this truth ought also to furnish us with the reason why a Bold man hath so much Confidence and Presumption in himself why he is not astonished at the sight of dangers that even he is pleased when he encounters them and that very often he despiseth them why he is not superstitious cholerick or dissembling In fine why he hates subjection and will always command For if Confidence be nothing but a consummated Hope fortified by the opinion we have that those things whose help we expect will not fail us at our need it 's certain that the Soul which knows its forces and beleeves them more powerful then the difficulties and employs them against them with Hope to overcome them must also be assured that they will not fail her in this occasion and that she hath cause to trust to the help which she promiseth herself from them As for Presumption which is an immoderate Hope and proceeds from the too great opinion we have of our Forces although it doth not always accompany Boldness yet it follows it because heat encreasing and kindling it self in this Passion it stirs up the Soul by its vivacity It troubles it by its agitation and afterwards easily perswades it that its forces are greater then indeed they are and that they are all in a condition to serve her although there often be but one part of them thus it is when Wine Fury and Love inspire the weakest and most timorous persons with a blind Confidence and a temerous Boldness which engageth them to undertake things above their power for the Judgement being weakened by the vapors of the Wine or by the violence of those Passions and heat being become stronger by the impression it made on the humors we need not wonder if the Soul finding it self upheld with the most powerful assistance which she can use in her functions be deceived in the opinion she hath of her strength and that she believes them greater then indeed they are These Reasons make it appear also A Bold man is not astonished at sight of dangers that a bold man ought not to be astonished at the sight of dangers because astonishment being ever accompanied with Fear and with some Despair cannot be susceptible of those Passions in the belief he is that his forces are greater then the difficulties and in the hope he hath to overcome them On the contrary as he flatters himself in this thought and placeth all his happiness in the Victory all these things which are to contribute thereunto are pleasing to him he takes a delight to handle Arms the found of Trumpets animates him he beholds the Enemies approach with joy and if there be any thing which disturbs his contentment it is the impatience he hath to be at him and to begin that Combate which is to crown his valor It 's the same with him who is bold to speak or to write or to undertake any other design whatsoever it be he pleaseth himself in the encounter of those difficulties which are to employ him and to make his courage appear the place the occasion the subject of his enterprise far from astonishing him do but the more assure him and he is never so content as when he sees himself ready to set his hand to the work But if it be true that he runs thus into danger that he assaults difficulties A Bold man despiseth dangers and that he will overcome them how can he despise dangers For it is not to slight an Enemy when we assault and seek to overcome him Certainly we must confess that he despiseth not all manner of dangers not all sorts of Enemies but onely those who are far beneath his strength and that therefore he judgeth it unworthy for him to exercise his care and Courage for since in Nature which gives Animals the knowledge of their strength and weakness and instructs them to flie when they are too weak and to assault when they are strong enough it s very likely that being so wise and so just as she is she would not engage them in a too
gather it self betwixt the eyes and then certainly if the skin be fleshy it makes as it were a great cloud in the midst of the Forehead which Aristotle calls for the same reason Nebulous which is proper and natural to Lions and to Bulls and which is one of the principal signs of the natural disposition a man hath for Boldness as elsewhere shall be said When the hair stands on end Why the hair stands on end it is because the skin it s rooted in is moved but this motion may be made two ways for those creatures which have a moveable and musculous skin make it move when they please and when they will assault or defend themselves they shrink it up that they may render it stiffer and stronger and then necessarily those plights and wrinkles which are formed must make the hair or feathers stare with which it 's covered It is not so with men their skin being not musculous they cannot voluntarily move it but onely out of necessity and that happens when the spirits with precipitation quit the outward parts of the Head and flye away elsewhere For the skin which is then forced to restrain and shut up it self makes the roots of the hair retire which are commonly obliquely laid in the thickness of the skin and in reverting of it it makes the hairs rise and stand on end Commonly fear and astonishment cause this flight of the spirits and which calling them back again to the Heart render the Face pale and makes the hair stand But this is sometimes also done by a great endeavor of the Courage For the Soul seeing it self pressed by a puissant Enemy gathers the spirits from all parts in which its principal strength consists and sends them to the Arms and so those other parts which are appointed to assault and combate so that those which are abandoned of them grow pale and the skin shrivels and the hair stands on end even as they do in fear Now as Boldness and Anger onely can cause this endeavor its onely they which are capable to produce this effect in the manner spoken of But when that happens it 's a sign that those Passions will rise either to fury or despair for which cause we commonly say that a Man that looks pale with Anger is terrible because the Soul never useth these extraordinary means but when she is extreamly prest and when she carries her self away to her last violences To conclude therefore this Discourse a Bold mans hair may stand upright from the fear and from the astonishment which may sometimes surprise him at the sight of danger or by the last effort of Courage as hath been said The Nostrils open and widen themselves because the heat growing stronger requires a greater respiration and obligeth the soul therefore to enlarge the passages by reason whereof those who naturally have those parts wide and open are commonly bold and cholerick The Smile comes from the indignation a man hath to see himself assaulted by a temerous or insolent enemy or from our despising of his weak endeavors But if we would know why these Passions cause these effects we must see what hath been said in the Discourse of Laughter Silence is proper to true Boldness Why he is silent chiefly when it s going into danger either because it is then entirely gathered up in it self to consider the greatness thereof or because it disdains to speak to any body with whom it denies society either because it hates or scorns them or last of all because it knows Words are arms of weakness and with them Combates are not to be decided And certainly Boldness abounds not in words unless in such who have their weaknesses for the Soul which knows its defect useth all those means which may releive her and employs besides those endeavors which she makes threatnings cryings out and reasons to fright the enemy and hide her own imbecillity such is the Boldness of Women and Children such is that of Bragadocio's And this Maxime is so general that even amongst Beasts we see that little Dogs continually bark when Mastiffs and great ones which are bigger and taller seldom bark and are readier to fall on then we are awares A man that is truly Bold doth the like he is silent when he sees the enemy he goes towards him and assaults him without speaking a word but it 's a threatning Silence and which better expresseth his desire he hath to fight and the confidence he hath in his forces then even words themselves Yet this hinders not What the voice of a Bold man is but that in the heat of the Combate from time to time some flashes of his Voice short and piercing may escape him which commonly accompany the blows he gives or the steps he takes and this in my opinion is to astonish the enemy by those exclamations which remark Ardor and Courage or to animate and provoke himself his cryings out producing the same effect with that of the sound of Trumpets Or rather this comes from the endeavors and struggles which the parts make within which with impetuosity driving the air to the Lungs force it at its issuing out to resound again and to form a strong and penetrating sound because it s driven out with violence Great because the passages are inlarged by heat and short because it 's made by sallies and shocks it seems even as if it issued not with liberty and as if the lips and the teeth stopping it in its passage would force it to return and retort it on himself and to seek other passages in which it's inwardly heard to resound This appears in the howlings of Mastiffs and Blood-Hounds in the roaring of Lions for all of these cast onely forth a great sound of a short and resounding voice which loseth it self in the hollow of the Throat and Breast and which they do not redouble but by long intervals by reason that the Soul which trusts its strengths thinks not it ought to double its shocks with that eagerness which always accompanies weakness The voice of a Bold man is then constrained disturbed and as it were entangled in it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Aristotle calls it which the Commentators understood not when they said it signified words which precipitated themselves the one or the other and enterfer'd by the swiftness of the pronuntiation For this indeed may happen in Anger for these reasons we shall note but not in Boldness which is neither loud nor talkative which shortens as much as possibly not onely its voice but even its discourse for besides that it never useth any long threats it cuts them short at first and leaves always more to be thought then is said Quos ego Somtimes he blows with impetuosity whether the pantings and shocks he gives his Breast cause the air violently to issue or that from time to time keeping in his breath he is afterwards constrained to use more blowing to drive out the fumes
who were of that temper walked after that manner this proposition would be somewhat probable But besides that all those who are robustious walk not so There are those which are not so to whom this gate is natural or at least who in some occasions use it as in Boldness in Pride and the like We must then refer this effect to a more general cause which must not be constant and unchangeable as the temperature is but changeth according to its encounters And truly if it be a Character proper to Boldness it must proceed from the agitation of the Soul whether it serve its design or be done out of necessity Now he that will consider that the Soul which will board the enemy stiffens herself to fortifie herself and begins to raise herself as to make trial of the assault she is going about will judge for the reasons which we have so often alleadged that she ought to inspire the same motions into the organs and consequently that she stiffens them and drives them vigorously So that the march and the other actions of the Body must suffer some change and must be performed after another manner then they were wont to be by reason of that new and extraordinary impression which they receive A man then which is animated with Boldness marcheth with a stiffer and more vigorous pace having a greater number of Muscles which stiffen it and that all his body weighs and rests it self on that foot which upholds it So that he the more strongly treads the ground when he walks wherein the stediness of the things supported consists and because he cannot so readily displace that foot which stands strong under so great a burthen of necessity his pace must be slow and he must go the more heavily But this slowness is recompenced by the greatness and largeness of his steps his strength seconding the desire he had to get to his Enemy mixing if we may so say haste with gravity In pursuit of those motions the Shoulders are moved and stirred as we have said Because all the Body stiffening it self and laying all the weight on the foot it must needs be that changing place and carrying the same burthen to the other the Shoulder must advance and weigh down it self on the same side and this being done with vigor the impetuosity of the motion causeth it to turn somewhat inwardly and passing so from the one to the other it ballanceth all the body in marching Thus then Boldness useth this kinde of gate so that if it be natural and ordinary in some it 's a sign of greatness of Courage because the Soul which hath a secret knowledge of the motions it ought to make by instinct bears it self to this kinde of pace which is proper to Boldness and to Generosity and marching without minding it as if she ought alwayes to affront the Enemy Furthermore Why he stoops his Head when he assaults when a Bold man is near danger and upon the point of assaulting his adversary he stooping his Head throws himself on him whether he thinks he should therewith knock against him or that his desire of fighting makes him advance that part as it doth the rest of them Or that stiffening the Arms to strike the Neck must stiffen it self to support the endeavor of that motion and in pursuit the Muscles shorten themselves and so cause the Head to stoop or in fine because it would cover it self and not give aim to the enemies blows for this reason it is that he bows all his Body that he gathers himself up that he contracts himself and puts himself on his guard to use the terms of Art In the heat of the Combate His Face is inflamed his Eyes become ardent and his sweat runs from all parts Forasmuch as the spirits and the humors cast themselves impetuously to the outward parts and that the heat which the Soul stirs up in this encounter expands it self every way dissolves the humors and causeth them to run through the pores which she keeps open It 's thus That in great endeavors we have often seen blood startle out of the Eyes Lips and other parts and sometimes even from all the Body in form of sweat But when this last happens the transport of the Soul must be excessive For she must be much urged and constrained to do a very extraordinary endeavor after this manner to drive out of the veins this treasure of life He beats the earth with his feet to make his Force and vigor appear and to astonish the enemy by the noise and tempest which at once his Foot his Voice and his blows make He darts himself forth and leaps lightly his forces being augmented by heat and by the motion of the spirits which render him lighter and better disposed His respiration is strong and impetuous because heat is encreased which augments the force of the vital parts and requires a greater refreshment for which cause the Breast and the Lungs extend and enlarge themselves the more to attract the greater quantity of fresh air and they fall with precipitation the more readily to drive away the fumes which the boiling of the spirits and the humor excite The Pulse is great high quick frequent and vehement for the same reasons for the Arteries open and extend themselves very much that they may receive the more air for the refreshing of the spirits and as this opening satisfies not yet the need which presseth the Heart the Soul adds to the greatness of its motion swiftness and frequency the more readily to attract refreshment and the oftner to discharge those fumes which heat raiseth up To conclude Because she gathers together her forces to assault and combate ill we need not doubt but the vital Faculty grows stronger but that she more powerfully moves her organs and that consequently she makes the Pulse more strong and vehement It 's true that all these divers beatings of it are also in Anger but when we speak of that Passion we will shew the difference she makes therein Let 's go to more pleasing subjects which hither to have been observed by no man or at least which our ordinary Philosophy hath not yet examined PART II. CHAP. I. The Characters of Constancy or of the strength of Courage IF it be true that Boldness hath no other function but to assault and combate Constancy is different from Boldness yet is the Soul often obliged to labour in its own defence and simply to resist those ills without daring to assault them there must necessarily therefore be a Passion which must serve it in this encounter and must be different from Boldness And truly fince Passions are motions there must be several Passions where there is a diversity of motion Now the motion which the Soul makes in resisting is altogether different from that which she makes in assaulting whether it be in the manner wherewith it 's agitated or in the end which she hath proposed to
pretend not to conquer him she at least assures herself that she shall not be overcome as knowing that the strongest waves break themselves against the rocks and that the banks hinder the overflowings of the most impetuous Rivers she promiseth herself the same success from her resistance and believes that the strength of her Courage will break off the violence of the ills and stop the course of all those mischiefs which come pouring upon her In her opinion there is no effort strong enough to make her yield all the Elements would change place without making her change her station and were it possible the mass of the Heavens should break she imagines that she could sustain its ruines without being over-turned But what is more wonderful is that she often mistrusts her forces and sees well enough that her resistance will be useless and her loss inevitable Neither is this capable to make her change her resolution although even she might escape the danger by flight she remains firm and expects the shock of the enemy with the same tranquillity and with the same confidence as if she were sure of the Victory She also believes that a man is never overcome if he loseth not his heart if he delivers not up his arms that yielding to force we yield not to honor of the Battel and that in that of Constancy we have always this advantage To triumph over the Conqueror She in pursuit hereof represents to herself the glory which so many great Courages have acquired in torments and in punishments the Crowns which they have deserved in the most difficult proofs of patience and the immortal renown of such fair examples make her hope if she can but constantly suffer the ills which threaten her with this thought she encourageth her self and without hearing those reasons which might make her yield she puts herself in a condition to receive the enemy and vigorously to maintain his assaults Behold her now grappling with him behold her either assaulted with the violence of grief or by the outrages of Fortune or by the darts of Calumny as if she were insensible of all their blows she neither troubles herself to flie from them or to repel them and although she be cruelly wounded by them she suffers not so much as a complaint nor a threat to come from her which might make the least resentment of hers appear She sees her body torn with tortures or with sickness as if it did not truly belong unto her or in effect were but her Garment She considers the loss of her Goods as a debt she repays Fortune and thinks that an injury is ill onely in the opinion of him that suffers it and can truly offend onely him that doth it Whilst by these reasons she seeks to sweeten her ills they forbear not incessantly to perplex her with fresh pangs which sometimes are so violent that she cannot save the Body from succumbing under their violence and from betraying its sensibleness by its weakness and by that languor which appals it But for her own part instead of growing weaker she becomes more strong and vigorous and as the earth strengthens it self when it s beaten we may say that the blows of grief harden her and render her impenetrable against all its attaints Grief it self which seems to be the inseparable companion of adversity and misfortune cannot reach her at least it never riseth to that high Region where she forms her designs and where she entertains a calm and a continual serenity It 's from thence she securely beholds the storms and the tempests which agitate the inferior parts the troubles and sufferings whereof she with pleasure often considers and sheds abroad a chearfulness in the complaints and tears which the rigor of her ill often extorts from her Mouth and Eyes And truly there is cause of astonishment to see her so calm in the midst of chains and fire in the midst of publick desolations in the midst of so many things the thought of which alone produceth horror and terror but that in these encounters she should witness joy that she should bless her persecutors and that she should speak her pains to be pleasing and glorious it 's a thing which seems to combate Reason and Nature and which is almost unconceivable We must also confess that this is the last effort of Constancy and that she then ought to be upheld by some great and noble Passion to produce some great and wonderful effect For commonly griefs and misfortunes use to convey into the strongest and most resolute Soul I know not what kinde of bitterness which renders it pecuish and wary which at every instant forceth from it some secret complaints and at length bereaves it of its strength at least of that ardor and vivacity which it had at first It 's then there that the Soul employs Constancy against Adversaries It 's thus she defends herself from those ills which assault her with open force Let 's now see what she doth against those which under the appearance of good seek to seduce her which to betray her flatter her and to overcome her use no other violence but onely those of enticements and charms I mean Voluptuousness and Ambition and all those unjust desires which continually present themselves unto her which at every moment provoke and sollicite her and which are the more to be feared the Sences keeping intelligence with them and forasmuch as they promise felicity to those who suffer themselves to be overcome by their allurements We must certainly confess that she useth no other arms to defend herself against such dangerous enemies but onely those which Constancy in these encounters affords her she knows that to render their plots and their forces useless she needs onely to keep herself stiff and firm and that in that condition she cannot be mollified with Pleasures nor lifted up with the winde of Honor nor carried away by the hope of those goods which she hath not she knows that Pleasure is ever accompanied with Repentance that Ambition never walks but on precipices and that Desire is not so much a sign as it is the cause of Poverty Moreover she knows that all the contentment and all the good fortune which those deceivers promise are but impoisoned sweets which corrupt Health and Reason and destroy the quiet of the Mind and the tranquillity of Life On such like Reasons being resolved to hold out against them she puts herself upon her guard and shuts up all the avenues by which they might surprise her affections she turns her eyes from the most pleasing objects she shuts her ears to the most charming words and perswasions she flies the approach of all those things which might tickle or seduce the sence For it 's certain that she expects not such kinde of enemies in a stedfast posture and that she receives them not chearfully as she doth the rest She commonly defends herself from these by a wise retreat and when
the other to stop it which is above the power of a material and determinate Faculty Nay even the Understanding how separate soever it be from matter and how universal soever it be would never go so far had she not those several stages and those several degrees which its known to have For those who have most curiously examined the nature thereof confess that there are as it were two parts in it the one of which is low next to the sensitive Soul and which by reason of that neighborhood suffers it self to be easily carried away and corrupted by the sences the other is more pure and raised up higher which for that cause is called the top and height of the Understanding wherein God hath effused the light of true Reason and the seeds of all the vertues and it 's that also which inspires the Will to resist those Passions which the other hath raised there unknown or contrary to its advice thus these contrary designs whereof we have spoken are not formed by one and the same power since that which serves for Constancy is formed in the highest part of the Understanding and that which serves to that Passion to which it is to be opposed is made in the lower region But we have marched too far on precipices and on thorns The Soul resists not ill but by Constancy let 's leave these by-ways and these subjects which with their difficulty astonish the mind Let 's onely observe that Constancy and strength of courage is alone the only means by which the Soul truly resists the Passions for although ordinary Philosophy proposeth others unto us as to divert our thoughts from the object which raiseth them to weaken their power by Ratiocination to fall upon other contrary Passions and the like Yet to consider it well therein there is no true resistance they are rather flights or fights then a simple defence For when we will not consider the injury which we receive that is not to defend our selves from Anger it 's to flie it even as it is to assault it when we employ a contrary Passion for to destroy it But yet to deserve the honor to have resisted them in what way soever it were we must have had the design for we may divert a man from being angry we may also inspire another Passion in him which may appease his fury and fear may fall upon him which may take from him that fence of vengeance which he may have conceived And yet a man will not say that in these encounters he resists his Passion for that he had it not in his intention It is even so with Beasts in whom one Passion may weaken and destroy another in whom the same Appetite may stiffen it self and by its stiffening hinder it self from taking the impression of another motion No they do not for that resist their Passions because besides that they cannot as I have said form the design of it it must needs be that they must be able to reflect on their actions against those maxims which we have elsewhere established Let 's then conclude that Constancy is a motion of the Appetite by which the Soul confirms and stiffens it self in it self with an intention to resist those ills which assault it To examine now those ills would be to fall into useless and impertinent repetitions for they are the same which move Boldness and all what we have said of them in that place may be here applied It will suffice if we remember that under the notion of ill we understand not onely a pure privation but also the causes which produce it and the incommodities which follow it and that the two latter are the true ills which the Soul resists The differences of Constancy We should have nothing more to say on this subject did not the method which we have followed in the rest of the Passions oblige us to observe the most remarkable differences of Constancy and chiefly those which may serve to afford us a reason for those Characters which she imprints in the Soul and in the Body Let 's then say that there are none essential forasmuch as the motion and the motive which cause all the essence of this Passion are equally to be found in all sorts of Constancy as for those which we call accidental the most remarkable are drawn from the subject wherein she is found or from the object which raiseth it or from the relation which it hath with Reason For if we consider its subject it hath one which is in the Will and another which is in the sensitive Appotite In respect of the Object there are divers sorts according to the several sorts of ill which assault the Soul but the most considerable is that which resists the Passions and that which opposeth it self to the violence and endeavors of exterior ills this is common to all Animals and depends altogether on corporal strength namely on those which are most proper to suffer such as are to be found in the melancholy temperature of which we have spoke in the Discourse of Boldness the other is proper and peculiar for Men and principally for those which are most reasonable because it 's commonly Reason which moves us to oppose the Passions so that herein there needs no other strength but that of the Soul wherefore those whose spirits are strong by nature or by study are most susceptible of it It 's true that the force of the minde depends often from the temperature whence it is that young people and Women whose spirits by reason of their constitution are less strong are troubled to resist their Passions Finally There are some that are vertuous others vicious according as they are conformable or contrary to right Reason and so serve for the matter of Vertues or Vices In effect Justice borroweth from this Passion Firmness which is necessary unto it to resist Love Hatred and such other things as might corrupt it Temperance could not moderate the motions of the concupiscible Appetite but by its means and those Vertues which force produceth by resistance such as are Patience Constancy and Perseverance are maintained onely by it On the contrary when she straggles out of the right way and abandons the conduct of Reason there is no Vice which she doth not encourage and assist because she alone resists those motions which the Conscience inspires always in those who undertake or execute any evil design But although she may be found in all vicious actions there are some wherein she appears more as in Temerity in Hard-heartedness and in Opiniastrecy as we shall hereafter make it appear Now all those terms wherewith we use to express Boldness are also employed for Constancy For to say a man hath suffered death Constantly we use to say he hath suffered it with a Courage with Resolution with Assurance without fear and without apprehension and this happens from that Constancy is as it were a demy Boldness at least it is
and that a Constant Man will see the greatest dangers and suffer most cruel pains without bending his Brow Now this comes either from his great attention in considering the ill for it makes him the more to open his eyes and consequently to lift up his Brows which then cannot be restrained or from the confidence he hath of his forces which defends him from thinking on such small precautions or from the design he hath by this outward immobility to make it appear that his Courage is not to be shaken What his Silence is Silence is not here fierce and disdainful as it is in Boldness because fierceness and disdain are effects of Pride which are seldom to be found in true Constancy But it 's modest and serious and proceeds meerly from the attention the Soul is in for to defend herself and from the confidence she hath of her own strength for that makes her forget words and this defends them since as we have already said they are arms of weakness As for the rest of the Characters which we have now spoken of such as are the coldness of the Face the strength of the Voice and Pulse holding the Breath having the Head and Stature erect there is no difference neither in their effect nor in their cause from those which accompany Hope and Boldness for which cause we send back the Reader to those places where we have carefully observed them and where it doth appear that if they follow those two Passions it 's because they are always upheld by Constancy and strength of Courage But if she hath such a contexture and conformity with them Why Constancy hath not the rest of the Characters of Hope why hath she not also all their other Characters Certainly it 's because besides the stifness which they give the Soul they inspire also other motions which are not to be found in Constancy for Hope indeed stiffens it self against difficulties but at the same time she aspires to the good which she seeks and still expects some help which may deliver her up the possession which makes her unquiet and impatient she sighs and casts up her eyes which happens not in Constancy because she hath no other design but to resist Ill. The same happens in Boldness which stiffens it self also to strengthen it self but besides that darts it self forth and throws it self on the Enemy So that all what follows this darting forth belongs not to Constancy which when she is alone never suffers this agitation so the thorow Looks the widening of the Nostrils the thunder of the Voyce the fierceness of the Countenance a vehement respiration the redness and heat of the parts and the like which proceed from the raising up of the Soul and from the violence wherewith it is agitated are not to be met withal in all in that Constancy which is exempt from those great storms It 's true that its Pace is like that of Boldness because that in stiffening herself she makes the Body weighty and march the more heavily But she balanceth it not as that doth forasmuch as she hath not that impetuosity which causeth the shoulders to turn inwardly in which this ballancing of the body chiefly consists and this bold Gate We may say as much of the Post which is Noble without Pride for the Head is lifted up without any fierceness the Stature is streight without lifting up the Shoulders and the motion of all the parts without constraint or violence is equal and modest Now all this is conformable to that condition which the Soul is in in this Passion for that in stiffening herself she stiffens the parts also which consequently become streight and that this posture is most safe and least exposed to injuries seeing she can the better see the enemy and is every way the readier to resist him But the fierceness of the Countenance the lifting up of the Shoulders which are principal marks of Pride as shall be shewn in its place they are to be found therein because the Soul nor ought nor can extend or lift it self up nor make any violent motion being stiffened as she is The stifness of the Body and parts is a proper and particular effect of this Passion When comâ—â—â— stiffness of the Body for if it be in some other of them we may say that it 's by her means and because that she accompanies them but she employs it not when she is to resist any thing which is corporeal otherwise she abuseth herself and makes a useless endeavor as hath been said Now to know wherein this stifness consists and how it 's made we must observe besides what hath been said hereupon in general That a thing may be two ways stiff either because it resists the touch or that it cannot be staggered now it may resist the touch by being hard and it 's hard either because it 's dry and solid as a stone or because it 's extended as a Baloon or because its parts are shut up and gathered together as those are which are prest and crowded neither can it be shaken either because its weighty or because it hath a motion contrary to that which would overturn it Thus a Column stands firm on its own weight a building supports it self by its props and butteresses the Members stiffen themselves being equally drawn by the opposing muscles which being supposed it 's certain that Constancy useth all these means to stiffen the parts if we except that hardness onely which comes from driness forasmuch as there needs a long time to produce that quality Yet must we make some distinction for that some stiffen themselves in one way others in another the Spirits and the Members which move voluntarily become firm by the opposition of their motions the Muscles by compression the Body by its weight and props which we must particularly examine We have shewn how the Spirits stiffen themselves and how they communicate their stifness to the parts but there is this difference That the stiffening of the Spirits comes from the contrariety of motions and that which is communicated is performed by their upholding of them for being stiffened it must necessarily be that they support the parts which touch them especially if they be fluid as the Humors are Those Members which are destined for voluntary motion as the Head the Eyes the Arms and the Legs render themselves also stiff by the contrariety of motions for being composed of several Muscles some of which cause them to move upwards and others downwards some to the right hand some to the left when they are all agitated at once they must needs remain firm and stiff and without going either way and then they must suffer that motion which is called Tonick which is the most violent of all and which makes us most weary For which cause we are more weary standing upright then walking up and down and it 's more troublesom to look long upon a fixed and settled look
in Beasts she is become criminal in men So that we may say she is in some manner like the vapors of the Earth which change into thunders and storms when they come near the Sun and that if she did not rise into the highest Region of the Soul she could never be able to produce those thunders and tempests which have caused so many publike calamities and have desolated so many Provinces and so many Kingdoms For we must not believe that the ill it doth falls onely on some particulars as that which proceeds from the Anger of Beasts and from the most part of humane Passions besides that it renders Cities and whole Nations furious it never strikes one person onely but the blow threatens and offends all civil Society For which cause the Laws which often tolerate the ill use of the rest of the Passions have never suffered that of Anger how just soever it were they ever reserved the revenging of injuries and whosoever hath usurped that power commits a crime justly to be resented and hath most commonly added to the infamy of the punishment the shame of the outrage In effect they could not have left to particulars a power which onely belongs to the publick and put the arms of Justice into the hands of a furious person without abandoning the life and fortune of all men to insolency and cruelty and without breaking those sacred bonds which unite them together in the forms of Communities and Republicks But what severity soever hath been practised what restraint soever they have bridled this wilde and untameable Passion withal they could never hinder it from bringing disorder and confusion where ever it came It hath made the wisest lose their Judgment and their Reason brought confusion amongst the best friends filled the most illustrious families with blood and slaughter and we may say that the earth reaks every where still with the broils it hath raised in the greatest Cities and in the fairest Provinces Those things which were ever had in veneration amongst men are violated by this insolent Passion which tramples under foot all the respects which Nature inspires with our lives and its impiety raiseth it self even against Heaven and against the Divinity it self In fine if we should speak all the ill it causeth perhaps we should learn all the ill which is done upon earth But the better to shew the disorders it causeth we need but represent a man who hath suffered himself to be carried away with these excesses and consider the strange change which it makes in his Minde and in his Countenance Anger is none of those Passions which sweetly insinuates it self into the soul Description of a man in Anger which flatters it at first and by weak beginnings takes from it the suspition of its violence it enters with impetuosity and with open arms or to speak better it enters it not it falls like thunder which strikes unawares and there is no distinction of time between its fall and the burnings it causeth for as soon as a man is possest with it he perceives himself inflamed with despight and disdain Vengeance like a torrent of fire disperseth it self in all its thoughts Fury prevails over his Reason and his Judgment and like a devouring flame it runs and crackles in his Veins it sparkles in his Eyes thunders in his words they are nothing but complaints reproaches and injuries nothing but threatnings and imprecations and blasphemies The more sweetness and weakness he naturally hath the more sharp and impetuous his Passion is the more stormy and insolent Neither respects nor considerations can restrain him he acknowledgeth neither Masters nor Friends nor Parents Silence provokes him Excuses commit an outrage and often innocency it self is no less insufferable then injuries As if he minded nothing but to torment himself he is not able to hear any reason which might calm the disturbance he is in but he is very ingenious to find out all those which may encrease it He fancies the offence greater then indeed it is he remarks the least circumstances that may aggravate it and if it happens that words and effects offend him not in the tone of the voice or in the motions of the Eyes he findes great causes of wrath and revenge Neither doth he stop there he calls to mind all the former good offices he hath done his Enemy and the ill usage he hath received from him even those actions which were before indifferent to him do then seem injurious the smallest of his faults appear sensible affronts and bitter injuries And being astonished that he foresaw not his ill designs he accuseth himself of impudence and of stupidity and adds to his first fury the indignation and despight which he conceived against himself Whereupon after having made his resentment sparkle by the extravagancy of his discourse and by all those exclamations which grief and rage drive forth he all at once falls into a profound silence and walking with large paces with a wilde and frightful mind by the frequent shakings of the Head and by the grinding of the Teeth and by his furious Looks he declares that he revolves in his mind the designs of some great and terrible revenge In effect there is no ill which a man could make his enemy suffer which presents not it self to his desires infamy punishments tortures are the sweetest chastisements he prepares for him the sword and poison are the meanest instruments which he means to employ he thinks which blows may be the rudest to be inflicted what places are most sensible what death might be most cruel And to glut his rage he proposeth to himself nothing less then to strangle him himself to tear in peeces and to feed on his very Heart and Bowels After a thousand such like designs which most commonly destroy one the other he would that some disorder might happen in Nature for his destruction that the earth would open and swallow him up that the plague might stifle him that he might be thunder-struck Finally he makes vows for his ill fortune that they may supply his own impotency and sollicites the wrath of Heaven and Hell to perfect the punishment which he hath commenced But should all this happen yet would not he be satisfied unless all men did believe that it was he who was the cause of all these mschiefs that he drew them on his Adversary and that even he also suffers them far rather for his particular satisfaction then for the chastisement of his crime Whilst he feeds his Passion with these cruel thoughts we hear long and scalding sighs which at every moment are fetched from the bottom of his Soul confused and interrupted words which from time to time escape his fury and the noise he makes by beating all what he meets with under hand or feet At last breaking out of his silence he detestss he threatens he blasphemes and discovers all what he hath on his heart and betraying his secret he renders
is they are onely preservative remedies For although we say that the ill committed may be repaired by chastisement that the equality of Justice demands punishments for those who have offended as well as rewards for those which have done well And finally That it 's just that he who hath lift up himself above that degree wherein the Law hath placed him should be cast down by it and suffer pains for the pleasure he took in doing it Yet the question remains still unresolved What the punishment doth against that fault which is committed since it takes not away the ill which is done nor the blemish or deformity it may have left in the Soul since even those sufferings have not that power And truly all the difficulty is concerning those punishments that God inflicts in the life to come for as for those which the natural and civil Law have prescribed we may say with the greatest men of Antiquity that they respect the future onely having no other end then to make him better who did the ill or to restrain others in their duty by the example or to provide for the safety of him who may be offended But all these motives have no place in those chastisements which the wicked suffer after death since they will then be no longer in a capacity to correct them and that they last to eternity wherein the example will be useless and where those whom they would offend need no longer have any thing to fear What design therefore hath Divine Justice proposed it self in those long and severe punishments For we must have a a care that we fall not into the error of those who say God hath no other design in punishing but to punish it were to offend his Wisdom and his Justice to make them act without being guided by that soveraign Equity which renders to every man according to his deserts It 's true that those he punishes deserve to be punished but why do they deserve it because they have offended him And why doth the offence deserve punishment since we cannot hinder the ill from having been done and that the pain hath no proportion with the offence nor with the satisfaction which God may require there being no likelihood that the ill which he inflicts on them can or ought to satisfie I know that in the design I have to endeavor to resolve such great difficulties by my particular sentiments some will say it 's a great temerity to seek to fathom the profundity of the Counsels and Judgments of God that they are mysteries which are rather to be adored with humility then examined with presumption and that those who dare enquire after reasons for their chastisements are in danger of such punishments as that Equitable Judge prepares for them Moreover if we are obliged to speak of it we must follow the already received Maxims and go by the ordinary road without taking by-ways which in all such cases are always dangerous But I shall oppose this advice onely with the respect and submission wherewith I undertake to speak of things which are towards men ineffable and incomprehensible The necessity which this subject imposeth on me to seek all the motives of punishments that so I might find that which Anger proposeth to its self in Revenge and the liberty which every man takes to speak what he thinks on questions which admit of no certain decision Whereupon I suppose I may with security propose my opinion hereupon since others do not satisfie the difficulties which are to be found therein and that even according to mine advice they do not sufficiently make known that soveraign Equity which God observes in his judgements We may therefore say That when God hath ordained Punishments he considered the future no more then the civil Laws do and had no other design but to keep men in their duty by the severity of punishments and to hinder them by the terror of sufferings from offending him and rendring themselves unworthy of his grace But because this forewarning were useless unless he executed what he hath ordained he at last makes the guilty suffer the punishment wherewith he before had justly threatned them not that he would thereby repair the ill committed or satisfie the offence done him but because he is faithful and true so that threatning and establishment of the Law is a work of his Justice which ought to hinder ill but the execution is an effect of his faithfulness which ought to maintain his Justice For which cause when the holy Scripture wherein we ought to learn the manner how we are to speak of divine things says that God is just it commonly adds that he is true and faithful all its pages are full of the fidelity of his Laws and of his Judgements and when it represents the history of things which happen after they were foretold it precisely observes that they happened that the prophecy might be fulfilled As if the event were onely to render God in his word true and faithful and to shew that his Justice and his Goodness cause him to make Laws and Decrees but that after they are made it 's his fidelity which obligeth him to put them in execution And truly did Justice exact punishment and that it were necessary to repair an offence by its chastisement we could never be pardoned without offending Justice and he who would remit the pain due to crimes would remain responsible to the Justice which of right belongs unto it And consequently Clemency Mercy and Lenity how excellent soever those Vertues are would be useless and contrary to reason To avoid these inconveniencies we must conclude that it is not the Justice but the Fidelity of the Law which exacts punishments and so neither is pardon contrary to Justice and if there be ought else which it seems to clash withal it 's the Fidelity of the Law which the Legislator in particulars may dispence withal since the Law is a floating general thing which is not determined to any in particular In effect the Prince hath power to diminish or change chastisements he sometimes suffers an innocent to suffer punishment for the guilty and believes he hath satisfied the Law when the punishment it ordained hath been executed on him who imputed on himself the crime of the guilty Finally this reason to me seems the more receivable because it easily resolves that great difficulty which Theology hath always held of the eternity of pain for to say that pain ought to be infinite because it respects an infinite object this and all other reasons which are commonly given do not fully satisfie the Mind and still leave some doubt why Divine Justice should exact an eternal punishment for a crime committed in a moment what necessity is there the chastisement should be infinite because the object is infinite and what satisfaction can God have of an offence which most commonly hurts onely him who committed it But if it be true that God ordains
that Passion which this motion had onely commenced And this is the more easie to be believed for that the motion of the spirits which makes no part of the Passion as that of the Appetite doth causeth the same effect For if it happen that the spirits are agitated with a motion proper to a Passion the Soul which sees what passeth in her organs and knows after what manner she is accustomed to stir them up presently fancies that object which ought to excite this motion and at last agitates it self conformably to that motive which this object inspires it withall and so that esmotion which it meets within the spirits It 's thus that Musick produceth Passion it 's thus that Love out of inclination is formed as we have shewed in the Treatise we have made thereof It 's then true that Anger is nothing else but Grief and Boldness united and confounded together and that the turbulent and unequal agitation which the Soul is constrained to suffer in the encounter and in the shock of these two opposite Passions makes that difference of motion which is proper unto it and which distinguisheth it from all the rest In effect we cannot conceive that the Appetite in Grief retires it self and that at the same time Boldness raiseth it up but we must fancy we see a Sea agitated with contrary winds and waves for the same combate which is made amongst the waves the same boylings which it raiseth up the same efforts with which it beats upon the shoar Finally the same trouble and confusion which this great Main suffers during the tempest are in the Soul when she is stirred up by these two violent Passions So that it is not without reason that we say the Sea grows angry and that Anger is a tempest since there is the same agitation in either of them and that both of them spring from the contrariety of motions which shake these two great depths But we may say That if Anger be a mixture of Grief and of Boldness it cannot be in the rank of simple Passions as we have hitherto conceived and as at the beginning of this work we our selves resolved Certainly there needs no contest hereupon and it were to fight against the truth to defend the common opinion for if there is a Passion which is mixt and composed it 's chiefly this where Grief and Boldness Desire and Hope are all met together That if we proposed it as a simple Passion besides that we did not then deduce those reasons which ought to oblige us to shun the errors of the School we may freely confess that upon the way we often discovered those things which at first we never thought to have met withal and that considering more nearly the nature of this Passion Reason and Truth have made it appear unto us to be altogether composed that is to say of Grief and Boldness as of its essential parts and of Desire and Hope as of inseparable accidents or necessary conditions which accompany it For it 's certain that he that is angry ought to desire and hope for revenge Yet the Mind may separate these two Passions from Anger without destroying its Nature forasmuch as without considering them it may conceive the Soul may be touched with Grief for the injury received and that she assaults the cause which caused it wherein all the Essence of Anger consists So that now we may define it to be A turbulent Agitation which Grief and Boldness move in the Appetite Definition of Anger whereby the Soul retires in herself to estrange herself from the injury received and at the same time raiseth herself up against the cause which caused it to be done for to revenge herself of it Whence we may judge that as this Passion is mixed its causes and effects are also of the same nature for it hath indeed two objects to wit the Injury and him who did it It hath two ends the one to estrange it self from ill and the other to revenge it self Lastly it 's composed of two motions which being united cause this turbulent agitation wherein we have said the principal difference of this Passion consists Yet we are to observe that as commonly Boldness vapors more in Anger then in Grief and yet that there are some Anger 's in which Grief appears stronger then Boldness It s certain that in these encounters the motions of these two Passions are proportionably stronger or weaker and that it often happens that its rising up is greater then its contraction and that sometimes also its contraction is more then its lifting up but if they are equal Boldness always appears more then Grief because in that the Soul produceth and casts it self forth and in Grief she hides and inwardly retires herself as we shall make it more particularly appear in the Chapter wherein we shall examine the nature of that Passion We must conclude this long Discourse with a resolution of an important difficulty which may here be made Who those are which are inclided to Anger For perhaps some will say that if Boldness makes a part of Anger it will follow that those who are naturally bold will also be most inclined to this Passion On the contrary those who are timorous should never be sensible of it Although experience teacheth us that those who are truly Bold are seldom provoked to Anger and that Children Women and sick persons which are weak and timorous are easily moved thereunto But this objection is easily answered if we remember that Boldness alone never produceth this Passion but that Grief must also meet with it that these mix and confound themselves together In a word that a man must be sensible of injuries and have a quick and agile Boldness to be susceptible of Anger Now those who have an heroick Boldness are not sensible of injuries unless they are very cousiderable because they despise most of those things which assault them and that that Melancholy which is in their temperature retains the fury of their spirits giving them time to examine the offences and to consider whether they deserve to be chastised On the contrary those who are weak of body or of mind and who have a very agile heat as Children and Women and those who have any remarkable defect finding themselves more exposed to injuries are easily born away with a desire of vengeance because their weakness makes them apprehend every thing and the subtile heat which they have is so quickly inflamed that they have not time enough to consider whether they are truly injured and whether they ought to revenge themselves or whether indeed they have the power and that is the reason why the Cholerick are the most angry of all because they have an ardent and active heat which renders all their actions precipitate and bereaves them of time and means to judge rightly of things For it 's certain that there is no quality so much an enemy to Reason as Heat and a
caused by that violent transport of Humors we have spoken of It 's thus that in malignant Feavers we see so many sad and unlook'd for accidents happen which astonish the Physitian and overthrow the Patient But this Discourse concerns Physick let us pursue our design and seek the causes of those Characters which are proper to this Passion CHAP. IV. The Causes of the Characters of Anger ALthough Anger be composed of Grief and Boldness and for the same cause its probable it should have no other Characters but those which those two Passions separately produce yet as in all other things mixture affords new vertues or so confounds those which are principal that it makes them appear altogether different from what they were it also happens that Anger besides those Characters which are common to her with Boldness and Grief it hath others particulars added unto it which are not at all to be found in the other if at least they encounter it is with very great difference Indeed if we do but consider these which it forms in the Soul it hath even as Boldness Hope Confidence and Freeness it hath just as Grief Peevishness Impatience and Heaviness But Pride Fury and Despair are far different herein from those which accompany those two Passions for if Boldness is proud it hath strength to maintain its Pride if it be carried away with Fury it 's after great strivings and it never happens at its beginning If finally Grief easily fall into Despair it 's a timorous base heedless despair but Anger hath a Boldness which is commonly vain and without any ground a precipitate fury kindled at the instant of its birth and when it is in despair of revenge it 's a temerous violent and enraged Despair Besides which it in particular makes great threatnings speaks much discovers its secrets it 's credulous impudent and opinionate it 's base cruel and insolent But this diversity appears also in the corporal Characters as we shall make it known after we have examined the causes of these Let 's therefore begin with Hope Why Hope devanceeth Anger which ever gives a beginning to Anger for it 's certain that this Passion is never kindled in the heart what injury soever a man hath received or what desire soever to retort it but first he hopes to have his revenge So that we are seldom angry with those that are extreamly above us Demons or dead bodies although they may offend us will never provoke us and it hath seldom been seen that a man of a low condition hath been carried away with wrath against his King or against his Lord forasmuch as such persons are so high that they seem to be out of reach and that it is as it were impossible to do them any harm and that so having no hope of being revenged they find it 's to no end to be angry with them But since this Hope cannot be founded but on those forces which we believe we have How weak persons hope to be revenged and that Natures which are most weak such as are Women and Children and sick persons are extreamly susceptible of Anger how is it possible they should hope to be revenged having not the power and carrying always about them a secret sence of their own weakness as hereafter we shall make it appear Certainly it 's easie to judge by those vain endeavors which they make in these encounters that it 's from the error of their thoughts and that the Soul suffers it self often to be deceived in the Judgment she makes of her forces Now this error commonly proceeds from the motion of heat which awakens and augments it self in this Passion for as we have said in the Discourse of Boldness this quality taking part with the corporal forces being seated in the Heart and being if we may so speak nearest the Irascible Appetite it cannot be irritated nor increased without the Souls being abused with a vain opinion which it perswades that she is strong enough to undertake great matters It 's as with a Prince who hearkens onely to generous counsels to whom his power and greatness are onely represented and who sees no man that provokes him not to take up arms For how weak soever he is incessantly finding himself sollicited by those violent Ministers having his ears always filled with their flatteries he at last suffers himself to be perswaded and without considering his impotency engageth himself in temerous undertakings the Soul often doth the like in the weakest bodies when natural heat kindles it self it the Heart seeing nothing about it if we may so speak but this floating and unquiet quality being every moment provoked by its ardor and by its vivacity and suffering it self to be surprised by the ostentation she makes of her power and vertue she at last imagines her forces are greater then indeed they are and without remembring her weakness she resolves to combate the ill and flatters herself with the hope of obtaining the Victory But it may be enquired what it is which then thus irritates and augments this heat What it is that irritates heat in weak persons forasmuch as if it be the Soul as we have said which employs it to destroy the ill she must needs hope to overcome it before she will offer to make use of it since the design always goes before those means which are proper to execute it and that in effect the Passions are immanent actions which form themselves in the Soul before the Body resents them for there is no question but Hope accompanies strong and robustious constitutions where it is not necessary that heat should be irritated to raise up this Passion it 's enough for them that they know their forces and are assured of them but here where weakness is whereof the Soul hath the knowledge and which consequently ought to make her mistrust herself there must needs be something to animate her courage In a word it 's necessary Heat should be augmented before Hope can be therein formed And yet we see nothing which can raise it since we suppose that there is nothing in the Soul but Grief which proceeds from the injury received and that this Passion far from encreasing heat is that which diminisheth and at last extinguisheth it To resolve this difficulty we must discover a secret which hath not hitherto been discovered in the Passions That there are Passions in the lowermost part of the Soul and say that in all Animals there are two Appetites the one which is sensitive and the other which is natural that both pursue what is profitable and flie what is ill And that both of them again raise themselves up against what is contrary unto them to overcome it For it 's certain that in sickness Nature irritates herself against ill and stirs up her forces to drive it away and that this motion is answerable to Anger and to Boldness which form themselves in the sensitive Soul So that
that power so neither is there any man but hopes to be revenged And truly all those actions which proceed from this Passion how slight soever they be are punishments by which we pretend to chastise him who hath offended us since there is not any but affords him Grief or Fear for a bold and brasen-faced mind an action full of disdain and despight and injurious words are able to displease persons even that are of the highest condition and threats are for no other purpose but to fright those against whom we make them Now if Grief and Fear are ills and consequently punishments with which the Soul intends to chastise him who hath committed an injury that he may do so no more believing that they are able to change his mind and that it 's sufficient to witness our Courage and resentment to make him even lose the desire of continuing his ill design and that he may imagine that their little essays are but the beginnings of a greater vengeance It 's thus that the wilde Beasts commonly bound their anger with a slight snap or a weak blow and that they often content themselves by affronting those who pursue them looking through them shewing their teeth onely and putting themselves in posture of assaulting them And although the weakness the Soul is in checks her often from undertaking more she had rather act thus weakly then to take flight which would be far more disadvantagious and by these motions which seem bold and generous she would hide her impotency and her defects as in other occasions she useth to do How ever it be she never makes herself angry but she hopes to be revenged and to make him who hath offended her suffer some kinde of ill But it follows not that she ought always to hope for full satisfaction of the injury which she thinks she hath received because it commonly depends on the opinion of men and not in the intention of Nature in effect the means and the degrees of revenge are commonly different according to the humor and the condition of the persons and according to the customs of the Country A Prince or a Gentleman revengeth himself after another manner then doth a Clown a cruel and bloody minded Man is not so easily satisfied as another and there are places where we believe without a single Duel no satisfaction can be had for an offence and others where poison and assassination are commonly imployed Now as it often happens that a man hath not the power to use those means nor to pursue his vengeance to that height it 's most certain that then we despair to revenge it after that manner but not absolutely to be unrevenged for the reasons aforesaid and it 's therefore true that the hope of revenge always precedes Anger As for Despair What kind of Despair it is happens in Anger which sometimes happens and renders it more violent neither is that an absolute loss of hope nor doth conclude against the Doctrine already proposed For we shall shew in the Discourse destined for that Passion what the word Despair signifies in our Language as well as in the Greek and Latine two Passions altogether different to wit the common despair wherein we lose all hope and wherein the Soul gives back and loseth courage perceiving that she cannot obtain that good which she expected and that despair or desperateness which is particular to Anger and Boldness which instead of mollifying or abating the courage stiffens it against all difficulties with a greater impetuosity and transport then it had before For it 's certain that in this the Soul which findes obstacles which she never foresaw loseth the hope of effecting what she proposed but at the same time she conceives another and forms new designs which engage her in those transports and fougadoes which are commonly called actions of despair as shall more fully appear when we throughly discourse on that subject Let 's now take a view of the other Characters of this Passion and without stoping at Confidence and at Presumption which have been examined in the Discourse of Boldness and depend on the same causes which produce Hope let 's enquire the nature and source of Fury which so often mixeth it self with Anger for although they are often confounded together and that we commonly give the latter the name of Fury yet they are two very different things since there are Anger 's which are nothing furious and that Fury is to be found in other Passions and in other actions wherein there is no suspition of Anger There are indeed divers sorts of Furie What fury is some have been called Divine others Brutal and others have been placed in the rank of Diseases But all have this in common that they put the Soul out of its natural place and transport it as it were out of it self some making it perform actions beyond the ordinary strength of men and which for the same cause seem to have something that 's divine the other causing him to lose his Reason and embasing him to the nature of the wildest beasts It 's not a place here to examine by retail all these differences it shall be sufficient to say that this violent transport wherein the essence of this Fury in general consists may proceed either from the Soul which raiseth up and animates herself or from that heat which pricks her up and irritates her the fury of Love and the Poetick Fury are amongst those which are divine those which commonly acknowledge no other cause but the Soul alone which of herself raiseth herself up and makes those miraculous sallies which are as Enthusiasms and divine inspirations for having the power to move herself she in those encounters darts herself forth with so much ardor that she carries herself away and as he which runs with too much impetuosity cannot stop himself and often goes further then he willingly would she abandons herself to the loose which she giveth herself and so passeth beyond her ordinary limits But it 's not so in Martial and Bacchick Furies nor in those others which follow Anger or corporal sicknesses For it is not the Soul which begins this motion wherewith she is in these encounters carried away it 's the heat which the Wine Boldness or the distemper of the body imprints in the spirits which being agitated by this turbulent quality at every moment strikes against the seat of the Animal Faculties which drives them forth and casts them into these extraordinary motions This therefore is the general reason whereby Anger passeth into Fury for a man need not doubt but that this Passion kindles a great fire in the bowels but that it violently agitates in the spirits and that the quiet which those noble operations of the Soul require must needs be trouled by that tempest which she raiseth in their principal organs so that the Faculties which conduct the Animal act no longer conformably to the Laws of Nature or of Reason
and having no longer a bridle to restrain them are hurried away with the rapidity of the spirits and the Passion which drives them and so perform all their actions with disorder and temerity But what contributes much to this precipitation it is Grief which is the first cause of Anger and weakness which commonly accompanies it for both of them are naturally impatient and constrained and eagerly sollicite the Soul to provide for her security that by reason that the ill is present this because it wants forces to resist it and that there is no time to be lost in so dangerous and urgent an occasion and from thence it comes that Anger is most impetuous in the weakest Natures and that Fury kindles not it self so suddenly in all the rest of the Passions as in this for that they are commonly exempt from Grief and weakness and that consequently there can be no cause for the Soul to hasten its endeavors for her defence its true that although robust Natures are not so soon transported as the rest as well for the reasons already alleadged as for that they are of a stronger and more solid complexion wherein heat is not so easily catching yet when once Fury hath seized on them besides that it is more vehement and more dangerous it 's also of a longer continuance because the heat is stronger and is longer preserved in gross and massive subjects then in such as are subtile and moveable such as are women and Children and all those who are of such like a temperature Pride is so proper to Anger that there is no Passion it more often accompanies Anger is proud nor with which it 's so familiar and certainly it 's a strange thing that as soon as it 's conceived in the weakest and vilest Mind that may be it takes away from it the knowledge of its baseness and impotency making it lose all the respect it ought to others and perswading it neither to yield nor submit to whatsoever it be We need not go far for an example since at every moment we may see that from its counsels Servants dare confront their Masters Children their Parents Subjects their Lords and what is most frightful such vile creatures as men are spare not the most holy things but often wrack it on God himself and although this discord appear not so great in persons of a high condition when they grow angry with their inferiors yet they cannot forbear being guilty of a very and unjust and odious Pride when they will hear neither Reason nor defences when silence or excuses provoke them the more and when a discovered innocency is to them but as a new injury for all this proceeds from the haughty and proud Nature of this Passion which will always be in the right and have reason on its side which will never yield to any body and will never acknowledge him for innocent from whom it believes it hath received an offence without ever accusing it self of impudence or injustice But whence may this Pride come which is often so ill grounded and is commonly upheld neither by strength nor reason Certainly we must not seek the source elsewhere then in the motion of heat which troubles the judgment and drives the Soul out of her ordinary limits as is before said For Pride being nothing but a swelling and as it were an immoderate extention of the Soul whereby she raiseth herself up more then she ought to do and in pursuit esteems her self grearer then indeed she is it is impossible that heat should be provoked without giving her a very great confidence without transporting her out of herself and consequently without causing this excessive elevation wherein Pride Consists Moreover the secret sence which every man hath of the excellency of his being which awakens him by the despight he believes he suffers by having been offended for to repair this wrong which he thinks he hath received by being despised he would lift himself up above him who abased him and filling himself with a great opinion of himself finds himself thus puft up with Arrogance and Vanity Anger abounds in Words and in Threats Anger is talkative and railing because the Fancy which is heated by the ardor she kindles in the spirits and which is full of such thoughts as Pride and Vengeance inspire is forced to cast them out on the Tongue and in its words and truly we may say that it is in some manner like liquor which the heat of the fire causeth to rise up in great boilings for the fuller the vessel is of it the more easily it riseth above the brims and so the more and the more abundantly they issue out and shed themselves It 's true that Grief which is always to be found with this Passion very much helps this effect by that precipitation and by that impatience which it gives the Soul for which cause Boldness alone loves not to talk so much as Anger and we may see the same person who boldly without speaking one word will go to fight who having been offended cannot forbear to cry out and threaten because Grief at that time mixeth it self with Boldness which is as a spur unto it which stimulates it and affords it a useless Fury But if Weakness joyns also with them Anger becomes so highly brawling and riseth to such an excess of words and threats that we may say that it s at that time a torrent which it's impossible to stop as is to be observed in that of Women of Children and the like Now this happens from that the Soul which knows its defect hath a design to hide it by such actions as seem couragious and whereby she thinks she ought to fright her enemy or from that Grief and weakness which are as we have said naturally unquiet and urgent not giving her time to tempt more powerful means to revenge herself cause her to have recourse to these first arms of Nature and cause her to dissipate her courage in these vain assaults And without doubt he that will but consider that Beasts which are couragious and Men who are bold and generous use not to brawle or to talk much when they have been offended by any man and that they seek their revenge may well judge that cryings out reasons and threatnings are the natural defences of provoked weakness and that those who employ them mistrust their own forces and resemble those thunders which onely make a noise and are heard a long time after their lightnings vanish for when a Bolt falls the fire the noise and the blow are resented at once and such is that Anger which is kindled in great Courages and in strong and robustious Constitutions as hath been said in the Discourse of Boldness From the same source whence the abundance of words comes Anger is indiscreet this indiscreet Frankness proceeds which renders it so facile to discover its most secret thoughts for there is no Passion which is so ill
Anger mark out also the same mixture of those two Passions of which we have shewn they were composed For we cannot doubt but a sad and crabbed mind which it sheds over the face sighs and crys which at every moment it casts forth and those tears which it so often vents proceed from Grief and that the ardor which appears in the Eyes in the voice and in all its motions proceeds from Boldness it 's true that this commonly produceth those which are most sensible and more in number then the other because it causeth the Soul to issue out and to discover it self instead whereof Grief making her retire within herself causeth also the greater parts of its effects to remain hid and not to appear as the others do And certainly in that number of corporal Characters which are observed in Anger there are but three or four which depend on Grief all the rest comming from Boldness and from Fury But from what source soever they deduce their origine we must not forget that some are made by the order and command of the Soul and that the rest happen out of a meer necessity she having no design nor intention to produce them as is the paleness and redness of the Face the wrinckles of the Forehead the swelling of the parts stammering c. For they serve for no other purpose in the design of Anger and they are onely formed in pursuit of the motion of the spirits and of the rest of the parts Now as there being many of both of these which have been examined in the foregoing Discourses which we intend not to touch any more It shall suffice to let the Reader know that in the Chapter of Boldness he may finde the causes of that through-look the motion of the Lids Brows and Forehead the widening of the Nostrils the standing of the Hair and that paleness which sometimes happens in the beginning of Anger That in the Chapter of Love he may see whence sighs spring and why the ruddiness which that Passion raiseth begins at the Eyes He shall in that of Constancy know whence the firmness of the parts proceeds As for Tears and other effects of Grief we shall speak of them in the Discourse which we have destined for that Passion Besides the Through-look there are two others which are familiar to Anger to wit a Fierce Look and a Furious Look Both of which have that in common that they are made with force and vivacity But the Fierce one hath somewhat that is sad and severe which is not always to be encountred in the Furious adding also that it is not so ardent and wandering as is this To render the Look Fierce Whence the fierce look comes the Brows must lowre and gather themselves together the Eye must be quick and piercing and the Sight firm and assured Such is that of Lions of Leopards and of Mastiffs for they naturally have their Eye-brows cast down and restrained which makes as it were a great cloud in the Forehead and their Eyes have a certain ardor which seem to breath forth blood and slaughter And certainly there needs no less then these three conditions to compose such a kinde of Look forasmuch as an Impudent man may well have firmness and vivacity in his looks but because he archeth up his Brows and that rude and severe air which proceeds from the contraction of the Brows and Forehead is wanting to him he therefore cannot have a fierce look On the other side Frowardness and a strong attention of mind may cause this severity to appear in the Face but because they take away vivacity from the Eyes they never render the Look fierce That piercing splendor indeed which appears in the Eyes and chiefly in those which are blew which the Latins call Caesios inspires somewhat of cruel and frightful in the look for which cause Tacitus calls the Germans eyes Truces and we are taught that Panthers and Leopards have I know not what kind of fierceness in theirs which the Lyons have not by reason that they have that colour and that the Eyes of these are altogether red which colour is more obscure and less splendent However it be Anger casts down and bonds the Brows to fortifie it self against the Grief it resents and against the Enemy which assaults it as hath been said elsewhere It 's Look is quick and assured by reason of that splendor and strength which it casts into the eyes by the quantity of spirits which it sends thither For we cannot doubt but that the firmness of the sight must be an effect of the strength of the parts and that the spirits must make the greatest part of their strength since they become languishing when they receive them no more To know wherein this firmness of sight consists we must consider what hath been said concerning it in the Chapter of Boldness Although the Furious Look is often taken for the fierce What a furious Look is yet is it not the same for there is a great difference betwixt the ordinary looks of a Lyon and those which he hath when he is provoked Betwixt the look of a man who is yet Master of his Anger and that he hath when madded and enraged that is fierce but this is furious and witnesseth an extream transport and a very straggling away of the Soul it 's made also with red and sparkling eyes which shout forth and seem to go out of the Head and which rowling from the one side to the other cause a wilde and wandering sight and as in the other the brows are bent downwards in this they are commonly lifted up and drawing their lids after them they make the opening of the eyes to be wider and rounder and so discover almost all the white of the eye Now all these Characters are so proper to Fury that even Physitians make use of them to know when the sick person will fall into such a fit and that it 's impossible to consider the state wherein the soul then is without perceiving that necessarily she must produce an effect For as the blood boils in the vessels Red Eys and impetuously casts it self on all the exterior parts all the veins of the Eyes are filled therewith and consequently become thicker and redder for which cause Aristotle says that those who naturally have theirs so are subject to that kind of furious Anger whereof we speak and that this relates to the proper character of this Passion but you must observe that this redness ought principally to be understood of the Eye and not of the Lids that the veins which are dispersed in the blew of the Eye are those which are swelled and which cause that redness which also is a sign of raving in sickness when it proceeds not from any particular vice of those organs The Eyes are sparkling Sparkling Eyes not onely by reason of that splendor which the spirits bring with them but also by reason of the
the impetuosity and the boilings wherwith the blood and spirits are agited but we must presently judge that that is the cause which makes the Veins and Arteries swelled and extended and that all the rest of the parts are full and puffed up and whosoever shall represent to himself the impatience and the transport wherein the Soul is will nothing wonder at these motions which in this Passion the Body suffers The Head is lifted up and the Stature grows erect for as much as the Soul raiseth up herself to assault the Enemy And although he be absent she forbears not to put herself into this posture as if she were ready to throw herself on him for that the violence of those Passions which trouble her represent him to her thought as if he were truly present and as if he ought in effect to feel the blows she intends to inflict The frequent flinging out of the Arms The motion of the parts in Anger a light and quick pace a continual change of posture and place are effects which note the endeavors and sallies of the Soul the precipitation and impatience she hath to revenge herself But whence comes it that we set up our Hands by our sides when with anger and threatnings we quarrel with any man it is without doubt to confirm the parts that the Muscles of respiration which they uphold may the more powerfully operate and by that means the voice may have the more force and be the longer lasting For which cause we are never content to place our hands thus on our sides but that we also advance the Arms and the Elbows whereby enlarging and extending the Shoulders we render them for the same purpose more stiff As for those blows wherewith a man in Anger beats the ground and all what comes under his hands or under his feet it 's very likely that they are such means as the soul useth to give a repulse to those difficulties which traverse her designs and that the trouble and blindness she is in causing her to take all things for true obstacles which stop her she strikes against she drives and she beats them as it were to break them and to put them by or else they are the effects of a precipitated Vengeance which Anger doth discharge on the first Objects it meets having not either the patience or the power to make them be rescued by its real Enemy It 's thus that Dogs bite the stones which are thrown at them it is thus we break the Sword which wounded us in a word it is thus we revenge our selves on our selves and above all its what concerns those from whom we have received an injury But what reason can we give for all those shakings of the Head which are remarkable in this Passion Whence the shakings of the Head What can oblige the Soul to move it one while to the right and then to the left sometimes up and sometimes down and sometimes on one side onely And to what end doth she cause these so extravagant motions and so different the one from another For to conclude that they are signs and natural effects which Anger produceth in all men of what Nation or of what constitution soever they are So that if Nature doth nothing in vain she must herein have her causes and reasons as well as in her greatest and most considerable actions It is true in my judgement they are very hard to be known and it is with them as with most part of things which hide them selves so much the more unto the Mind the more they discover themselves unto the Sences and which are as difficult to be comprehended as they are easily remarkable And certainly as all natural things are made for some end or out of necessity we cannot say but that the alteration of the Body or the agitation of the Humors must cause these motions by a necessary consequence as it happens in the redness of the Face in the wrinckles of the Forehead in the splendor of the Eyes and the like which are formed by necessity without being destined for any use and if we would place them in the rank of actions which are performed for some end it is nothing easie to observe what motive the Soul therein proposeth it self no what service she pretends to draw from thence To give further light to these obscurities you must first know whether these motions are not in other Passions and afterwards seek those motives for the which they were therein formed and lastly to see whether they may be applied to Anger It is certain that we use to shake the Head and to give it readily two or three turns about when any thing displeaseth Why we toss the Head as especially when we refuse or disapprove of any thing when we are sensible of an ungrateful smel or when we tast ought that is disgustful For which cause the vulgar commonly call Wine when it is not good Wine with two ears because it makes those two parts move when we turn the Head from one side to the other and that by that motion we would signifie that we found it to be naught But what relation can this action have with these sentiments Is it not that the Soul would turn away the face where the organs of the sences are from those objects which are displeasing to it as she useth to fix them on those which please Or that she seeks by that endeavor to estrange from her what is troublesome At least it is thus that when any thing incommodates those parts we shake them about to drive them away for although this in these encounters we speak of be useless unto it yet are they nothing extraordinary since she often deceives herself in the same manner upon other occasions wherein she abuseth those means which Nature hath prescribed her to attain her ends employing them in others where they are of no use as hath been shewed speaking of that water which Desire causeth in the Mouth and of the motion of the Brows at the sight of distasteful things Or we may rather say that this shaking of the Head is a mark the Soul would make of the impression which some kind of objects make on her and that it is an outward image of that action which she performs in herself For it is her custom that when she would have that appear outwardly which is done within she causeth those motions of the organs which have some relation and resemblance with her own as we may judge by the laughter of the looks and by all those other effects whereof we have spoken in this Work And certainly since that at the encounter of pleasant things she makes particular signs which make known the sence she hath of them she must needs also have some for those which are displeasing So that if she sweetly casts down the Head when good presents it self unto her as it happens when we meet a friend when we approve a
good action or when we consent to the will or advice of another to signifie by this casting down that she submits herself to the good which by reason of its excellency and because it always communicates it self with some empire can never be but with some submission and allowance it must needs be I say by the reason of contraries that when she perceives any ill she who hath a natural aversion from it which in its presence always disquiets its self and with which she can never have any society or communication must also make some outward motion which represents her impatience and the endeavor she makes to estrange herself from it Now he that shall consider the shaking of the Head which we speak of will easily confess that there is none which can better express her averseness her disquiet and the care she takes not to unite herself with it for aversion causeth the turn away of the Head impatience makes the change of posture and those contrary and redoubled motions make it appear that she will not unite with it since union in natural things is always made by a simple and uniform motion if there be no obstacle which hinders it Besides this it will be nothing difficult to declare why Anger produceth the same effect since it hath the same object which the rest of the Passions have and that it cannot consider its enemy but as a vexatious ill for the which it hath an aversion and whereunto it will ever witness the hatred it bears and the impatience it hath to revenge it self In effect this shaking of the Head is a kind of threat whereby we intend to fright people and which is not made use of in fight or when we come to blows threatnings being then useless as hath been said As for the other motion of the Head upwards Why we lift up the Head it is but little observable in this Passion unless when it would witness the scorn which it conceives of advice given it or of the designs and threatnings of the enemy In effect it is a Character fit for Scorn for him to whom we propose a thing which he slights usually to lift up his Nose to witness thereby that he rejects and repels it as unworthy of his esteem and care Finally Why we turn the Head Anger often causeth a man to turn and lift his Head on one side chiefly when he cannot or will not be revenged For when we receive an injury from a powerful person and have not the power to demand satisfaction we cause our resentment to appear by that action which is familiar to children that have a courage after they have been ill used as also those who form a design to revenge themselves when their enemy is absent or far off Because those are not then in a capacity to execute their revenge by reason of their weakness nor these by reason of the absence or far distance of him who hath offended them On the other side when for some certain consideration a man will not revenge himself although he may as when we esteem the injury not very considerable or that those who have done it deserves a more severe chastisement we content our selves with this motion of the Head to cause some fear in them And certainly it is in the rank of those actions which serve for threatnings whereby the Soul intends a displeasure or an apprehension in those who have offended her making them believe that those slight punishments are but the beginnings of a greater vengeance as hath been said However it be she intends thereby to make known that the injury toucheth her and that she means to retort it but that she retains this Passion and gives it not the liberty to go further for it turns the head to witness aversion it lifts it up to signifie its endeavor and presently brings it into its first posture to shew that it hath no more to do and that its enough for it to have witnessed its courage and resentment Some perhaps may say That we often perform the same action when we finde a thing to be excellent as when we would declare that a thing is well done that a man hath some eminent vertue that Wine is extreamly good To which we must answer That there is a great deal of difference betwixt these two For besides that in this we never turn the Head it is not thrown but as we have said it is rather drawn and raised up neither falls it again so soon as in Anger because its admiration which causeth this motion which raising up the Soul and keeping it in suspence to consider the wonder she incounters disposeth of the organs conformable to the condition she is then in Whereunto must also be added that the subject of admiration which here occupies the Mind is but mean for when it s very great it not onely causeth a man to lift up the Head on one side but he lifts it up altogether he opens also his Eyes and his Mouth raiseth and extends his Arms and all his parts take such an extatick figure which usually accompanies those great transports and raptures of the Soul as shall be said elsewhere But let us conclude this enquiry which to many may seem of no use or too much scruple and let us see whether Anger may be lulled asleep and whether it affords any release to the Mind whilst the Body is at rest We cannot doubt but that if Sleep can hardly insinuate it self in those Passions which are least violent it is as it were impossible that it should ever surprise this which is altogether in excess and vehemency The calm it is accompanied withal cannot agree with the tempest it raiseth and whether it be formed by the intermission of the Soul which knits and stops the spirits or by means of those sweet vapors which digestion sends up which like pleasant clouds tempers the heat of the Brain and shuts the passage of the sences we ought not to expect that any of these causes should produce it here wherein there are none but sharp and burning vapors which heated Choler causeth to rise up in the Brain and wherein the Soul is so powerfully agitated that far from being able to stop the Spirits she cannot retain even herself Yet this ought to be understood of the time when this Passion is in its rage and in its greatest ardor for when it is a little appeased it suffers sleep to benum the sences to repair those losses which its watchings and labour hath caused But what rest soever it affords it forbears not to preserve in the Soul and in the Humors the remains of that storm which Anger had raised in them For it is commonly disturbed with a thousand kinde of Dreams which sometimes represent fires and burnings sometimes threatnings and Combates and Victories now the cause of all these Dreams comes either from the imagination which being still full of those species which Passion had