siology now teaches; for although but repetition, it may
be said that Aristotle places the passions and emotions in
the organic life, and shews "that every individual must be
influenced by his particular temperament." Thus, as organs
predominate, or may be more or less active, individuals
are affected and modified, so to say, in temper as in cha-
racter. The temperaments ought to be subordinated, of
course, to the higher faculties; but those organs are abiding
powers, and they are ever exercising an influence which
it is for reason to control or subdue. Plato, in the Timæus,
has discerned this great truth—a mortal principle (ὅτε τὸ θνητὸν ἐπεστέλλε γένος) is there assigned to the body, as
the seat of the passions and coarser appetites, while the
brain is represented as a soil fit for the divine seed of
wisdom; and this will suffice to shew that this most gifted
man, although but imperfectly acquainted with physiology,
had perceived the co-existence in the human being of an
intellectual and, so to say, a functional existence. Des-
cartes[1] seems to have adopted opinions concerning the
"passions of the soul," which have much in common with
those of Aristotle; but although so well acquainted with
his writings, he does not appear to have studied this
treatise.
Note 12, p. 16. But the physiologist and the metaphy-
sician would, &c.] The difference here dwelt upon in
the mode of accounting for the same phenomena, accord-
ing to the bias given by studies or pursuits, will, it may
- ↑ Les Passions de l’ame.
