'Passion' and 'perturbation' are the old classical names that
the ancient philosophers and moralists gave to what they felt in
themselves as their minds and their hearts were affected by the world of
men and things around them. And they used to illustrate their teaching
on the subject of the passions by the figure of a storm at sea. They
said that it was because God had made the sea sensitive and responsive to
the winds that blew over it that a storm at sea ever arose. The storm
did not arise and the ships were not wrecked by anything from within the
sea itself; it was the outward world of the winds striking against the
quiet and inward world of the waters that roused the storms and sank the
ships. And with that illustration well printed in the minds and
imaginations of their scholars the old moralists felt their work among
their scholars was already all but done. For, so full of adaptation and
appeal is the whole outward world to the mind and heart of man, and so
sensitive and instantly responsive is the mind and heart of man to all
the approaches of the outward world, that the mind and heart of man are
constantly full of all kinds of passions, both bad and good.
Pages:
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127