G. WILL, IMAGINATION, AND THE ACTIVE LIFE

The central teachings of the Passions of the Soul have more to do with the passional, emotional life than with intellect and will. Perhaps as part of the anticipated doctrines of medicine and morals,^[28] it helps to explain the psy-

[27] Descartes in fact does not use the locution "clear and distinct" of ideas but of the grasp the mind has on ideas; thus the form is often adverbial rather than adjectival.

[28] Mentioned in the preface to the French edition of the Principles as part of the tree of philosophy: the roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches are all the other sciences reduced to three principal ones, medicine, mechanics, and morals (AT IXB 14).

chophysical character of most passions and gives instruction in how to keep them within bounds, with the ultimate goal of living a good life. The concluding article of the whole work puts it as follows.

Article 212. That it is on these [= the passions] alone that all the good and evil of this life depends.
For the rest, the soul can have pleasures on its own; but for those that are common to it and the body, they depend entirely on the Passions, in a manner such that men whom they can move the most are most capable of enjoying the sweetness of this life. It is true that they can also find here the greatest bitterness, when they do not know how to employ them well, and when fortune is against them. But Wisdom is principally useful on this point, that it teaches one so to make oneself master of them and to manage them with such skill that the evils they cause are quite supportable, and even that one draws joy from them all. (AT XI 488)

At the end of each of the three books that make up the Passions, there is at least a brief reflection on the role of the imagination and of images within the passional life. At the end of part l, in Article 50, Descartes emphasizes that although there seems to be a link established by nature between every motion of the pineal gland and the corresponding thoughts— and, in particular, between the passions we experience and the motions of gland, spirits, and brain that represent objects, chiefly as images—it is possible to change these links through habit and training, even through a single event, such as a foul taste in a dish we ordinarily love that puts us off that food forever.

At the end of part 2, which treats the number and order of the passions, there is in the penultimate article (no. 147) an example contrasting the internal emotions of the soul, which are not inherently attended by movements of the animal spirits, with the passions proper, which depend on these movements. A man who has lost his wife may be torn by a sadness aroused by the funeral display and his wife's absence, "and it can happen that some remnants of love or of pity, which present themselves to his imagination, draw veritable tears from his eyes, notwithstanding that he nevertheless feels a secret Joy in the deepest part of his soul; the emotion of which has so much power that the Sadness and the tears that accompany it can do nothing to diminish its force" (AT XI 441). Again, reading adventure stories can stimulate just about any passion, "according to the diversity of the objects that offer themselves to our imagination," passions that are nevertheless usually accompanied by a pure intellectual joy at feeling them.

In Article 211, the penultimate section of the concluding part 3, Descartes offers what he calls the most general remedy, "the easiest to pracrice," against the excesses of passion or their sometimes overwhelming

character.^[29] For example, some people are not able to keep from laughing when tickled, "although they do not take any pleasure in it. For the impression of Joy and surprise that has otherwise made them laugh for the same reason, being awakened in their phantasy, causes their lung to be suddenly inflated despite themselves" by the effects of the surrounding blood. And similarly for those who are disposed to feel certain passions strongly: they can scarcely control the physiological reaction "when their phantasy is strongly touched by the object of one of these Passions" (AT XI 486). The general remedy begins with the consideration that "when one feels the blood moved in this way one must take heed and remember that everything that presents itself to the imagination tends to deceive the soul and to make reasons appear to it that serve to make the object of its Passion much stronger than they are and those that serve to dissuade the soul much weaker." If the passion is inclining us to pursue immediately something that allows delay, we must refrain from judgment and distract ourselves with other thoughts until the emotion in the blood has abated. If the passion is inducing us to hesitate about something that requires an immediate decision, the will must consider and follow reasons contrary to the passion. As examples Descartes mentions two cases. When we are under attack we do not have time to deliberate, but those accustomed to reflect on their actions can usually manage to act swiftly enough. If they are struck by fear, "they will try to turn their thought from the consideration of the danger in representing to themselves the reasons why there is much more security and more honor in resistance than in flight." If, on the contrary, they feel a desire for vengeance because of excessive anger, "they will remember to think that it is imprudent to lose their life when one can save oneself without dishonor; and that if the contest is very unequal it is better to make an honest retreat or to ask for quarter than to expose oneself brutishly to a certain death."

At first glance the counsel of Article 211 suggests that imagination is the problem rather than the cure, that in general one must seek to counterbalance passions produced by various images by calling to mind rational maxims of good and bad behavior. Against this one could pit an inference it is possible to draw from the discussion in part l, Article 50, of the association and reassociation of sensory images: imagination can be used to retrain or rehabituate the passions. So, for example, a phobia of heights could be remedied not just by putting an individual in secure situations at progressively greater heights and removing safeguards one by one, but

[29] This is in addition to the specific remedies that derive from the psychophysical nature of each passion considered individually and to the possibility of altering the associations of gland movements and thoughts already described.

also by having the acrophobe imagine appropriate situations and recall past experiences so that he or she might recognize that they were not as dangerous as they seemed.

Moreover, one must be careful of reading too much into Descartes’ statement in Article 211 that "everything that presents itself to the imagination tends to deceive the soul." This does not imply that all images always deceive but rather, and quite in line with what the Meditations taught, that from our early childhood we tend to credit images and sensations with a greater cognitive value than they prove to have on closer examination. Pithy maxims do not operate on the level of "cogito, ergo sum," which is as much as possible abstracted from the particulars of sense and imagination, but rather set a different context for how the objects presented to imagination affect our psychophysical being.

As usual, a letter to Princess Elizabeth makes things clearer while qualifying the published works. In a letter of May or June 1645, Descartes points out how a person who has every reason to be content might nevertheless, by immersing himself in tragic dramas that he knows to be fictions, undergo physiological changes that would produce physical and psychological maladies. By contrast, a person who has every reason to feel displeasures but "who studies with great care to turn his imagination from them" and regards only objects tending to bring contentment and joy would learn to be dispassionate in judging his misfortunes and would even be restored to health by the physiological changes associated with those images (AT IV 219).

Imagination used well can thus give one control over one's moods, one's dispositions, even one's health—that is, over the realm of the substantial union of body and soul. In particular, imagination in the active sense is what enables us to delimit and control passive imagination. When Descartes defines passions of the soul in the narrowest sense of the term, he calls them imaginings. Article 27 says that passions in this sense are "perceptions, or sentiments, or emotions of the soul, which one refers to it [= the soul] particularly, and which are caused, maintained, and strengthened by some movement of the [animal] spirits" (AT XI 349). Article 26 calls these imaginings, imaginings that are dependent only on the fortuitous movement of the spirits, as opposed to those image perceptions that are dependent on the nerves, like sensations; fortuitous movements of spirits are also able to represent to the soul all the things that are represented through the nerves (AT XI 348), for example in dreams and reveries. Article 21 precedes these refinements of meaning with the bold assertion that the passions are imaginings that do not depend on the will (AT XI 344). That is, there are imaginings, producing new images, that come from acts of the will and that properly speaking are among the actions of the soul; then

there are imaginings that are the result of things presented to the sense (e.g., through the tragedies and comedies that depress or lift one psycho-physiologically); and finally the imaginings due to fortuitous movements of the pineal gland/animal spirit/nerve system, which are directly caused neither by the senses nor by the will.

I shall not tarry longer with this psychophysiological theory but only emphasize that the human being thus conceived is mentally active precisely as a willing being. This activity is exhibited in three mental "places": (A) in the soul alone (e.g., willing to love God); (B) in the realm of pure extension (e.g., imagining geometric figures); and (C) in the embodied soul (e.g., conceiving and imagining everyday plans and purposes). But each of these willing activities has a passive side: (a) intellection in the soul by itself; (b) the contemplation of the formed images of pure extension; and (c) the perception of what is stimulated by the traces in the pineal gland. The passions proper to the Passions of the Soul are of kind (c); they concern those things having a physiological cause (thus they are not formed by direct action of the will) that is perceived in the form of imaginings, sometimes clearly, sometimes obscurely; they range from the most realistic of dreams to the vaguest feelings of unease. Thus the Passions is chiefly about the human being as a passively imagining one, and as a willing being who can use willed reason and willed images to counterbalance the effects of the passive imaginings.

In the sixfold division of the human actions and passions noted above, will dominates the active side; it exists as purely spiritual (A) or is expressed as imagination in the thought of pure extension (B) and in the mental actions of everyday life (C). But on the passive side, we cannot say that intellect or perception dominates, since they are receptive toward the will, the active imagination, and various states of the body. Once again, the human being as conceived in the mature philosophy of Descartes is less decisively rational or intellectual than is commonly thought. Understanding how and why Descartes articulated the human being in this way requires recognizing the degree to which all his philosophizing was a prolonged meditation on fundamental psychology, with always a pervasive though sometimes mysterious role for imagination.

As at the conclusion of the previous chapter, it is illuminating to consider the issue from the perspective of the doctrine that human beings are made in God's image and likeness. The mathematical imagination described in Le Monde, guided by rules discoverable only to intellect, allowed human beings to replicate or mimick God's creation of the physical universe. The doctrine expressed in the Passions allows us to conceive a deeper sense in which the human being is made in the image of God. The 15 April 1630 letter to Mersenne had argued that in God will, understanding,

and creation are the same. This is not true or possible for any other, created being, in particular not for the finite human being, who at the very minimum is limited by God's being and the fact that <UL>God</UL> created the universe as it is and not otherwise. We cannot contravene the eternal truths; our ability to sense, imagine, and think is delimited by the nature (and the innate ideas) God has implanted in us. Moreover, unlike God and angels, we are aware creatures substantially united to matter, the fact of which union is impressed on us every day but which in its fundamental how and why is nearly unintelligible.

Nevertheless, God's infinity and perfection are reflected in the human will, which is perfect in its kind and unlimited. Although what we see clearly and distinctly we almost inevitably follow, we retain a power of holding in abeyance our assent to these things—and this is in fact the ontological-psychological source of the power of doubt. Insofar as God's will and knowledge are one and insofar as (according to the Passions ) every human willing (action) is associated with a perception by intellect (passion or reception)—leaving aside for the moment those perceptions that are nonvolitional, like sensations, hallucinations, and many emotions—the correspondence of action and passion in will and intellect constitutes a functional identity between volition and intellection that imitates the radical unity of will and intellect in God. But even more, our ability to replicate the physical world in imagination presented by Le Monde, our capacity to direct and modify our sensations, our imaginings, and our feelings in the psychophysiological realm, and our capability of doing these things consciously, with knowledge, all make us an image and likeness, as far as it is granted to human beings, of the power of God that overflows creatively into the reality of that Otherness called the universe.

In this sense Descartes provides a rationale for the unity of the theoretical and practical lives that eluded most of his Christian and ancient Greek predecessors, who contrasted the perfect life of contemplation to what was only second-best, often a very distant second-best: the practical, political, productive, earthly life. Descartes recognizes the power of intellect and the pleasures of contemplation, but, given the union of soul and body and the disproportion between will and intellect, the contemplation of truth cannot long detain the restlessness of the human soul, of human ingenium. When all is said and done, the image and likeness of God resembles the Creator more in will than in intellect. Will is not only the active obverse of the passive reverse intellection, it also has through phantasia or the pineal gland system an imaginative purchase on the created world that enables it to live there and even to conceive and make what has never before been realized in it. Our destiny as we know it naturally is above all to will well and rightly, which requires acknowledging both our own nature

implanted by God and the particularities of our situation. Knowing is therefore necessary and needs to be cultivated. But our being is not reducible to an operation of knowing, and we strive to perfect knowing not as an end in itself but because we will to live wisely. We increase our knowing so that we might live better, that is, so that our will might learn to guide itself in enjoying all the goods God has granted in the life of mind, of body, and of mind-body.