senses, and from which the mental emotions produced by the intellect are quite distinct). (4) The imagination with its two divisions, passive memory and active phantasy. (5) The intellect or reason. (6) The will.  These various stages or faculties are, however, not distinct parts of the soul, as in the old psychology, in opposition to which Descartes emphatically defends the unity of the soul.  It is one and the same psychical power that exercises the higher and the lower, the rational and the sensuous, the practical and the theoretical activities.

Of the mental functions, whether representative images, perceptions, or volitions, a part are referred to body (to parts of our own body, often also to external objects), and produced by the body (by the animal spirits and, generally, by the nerves as well), while the rest find both object and cause in the soul.  Intermediate between the two classes stand those acts of the will which are caused by the soul, but which relate to the body, e.g., when I resolve to walk or leap; and, what is more important, the passions, which relate to the soul itself, but which are called forth, sustained, and intensified by certain motions of the animal spirits.  Since only those beings which consist of a body as well as a soul are capable of the passions, these are specifically human phenomena.  These affections, though very numerous, may be reduced to a few simple or primary ones, of which the rest are mere specializations or combinations.  Descartes enumerates six primitive passions (which number Spinoza afterward reduced one-half)—­admiratio, amor et odium, cupiditas (desir), gaudium et tristitia.  The first and the fourth have no opposites, the former being neither positive nor negative, and the latter both at once.  Wonder, which includes under it esteem and contempt, signifies interest in an object which neither attracts us by its utility nor repels us by its hurtfulness, and yet does not leave us indifferent.  It is aroused by the powerful or surprising impression made by the extraordinary, the rare, the unexpected.  Love seeks to appropriate that which is profitable; hate, to ward off that which is harmful, to destroy that which is hostile.  Desire or longing looks with hope or fear to the future.  When that which is feared or hoped for has come to pass, joy and grief come in, which relate to existing good and evil, as desire relates to those to come.

The Cartesian theory of the passions forms the bridge over which its author passes from psychology to ethics.  No soul is so weak as to be incapable of completely mastering its passions, and of so directing them that from them all there will result that joyous temper advantageous to the reason.  The freedom of the will is unlimited.  Although a direct influence on the passions is denied it,—­it can neither annul them merely at its bidding, nor at once reduce them to silence, at least, not the more violent ones,—­it