it is so late nor long soon to be able to
strike eight; it wills nothing, feels nothing, perceives nothing. The lot
of the brute is the same. It sees and hears nothing, it does not hunger or
thirst, it does not rejoice or fear, if by these anything more than mere
corporeal phenomena is to be meant; of all these it possesses merely the
unconscious material basis; it moves and motion goes on in it--that is all.
The psychology of Descartes, which has had important results,[1] divides
_cogitationes_ into two classes: _actiones_ and _passiones_. Action denotes
everything which takes its origin in, and is in the power of, the soul;
passion, everything which the soul receives from without, in which it can
make no change, which is impressed upon it. The further development of this
distinction is marred by the crossing of the most diverse lines of thought,
resulting in obscurities and contradictions. Descartes's simple, naive
habits of thought and speech, which were those of a man of the world rather
than of a scholar, were quite incompatible with the adoption and consistent
use of a finely discriminated terminology; he is very free with _sive_, and
not very careful with the expressions _actio, passio, perceptio, affectio,
volitio_. First he equates activity and willing, for the will springs
exclusively from the soul--it is only in willing that the latter is
entirely independent; while, on the other hand, passivity is made
equivalent to representation and cognition, for the soul does not create
its ideas, but receives them,--sensuous impressions coming to her quite
evidently from the body. These equations, "_actio_--the practical, _passio_
= the theoretical function," are soon limited and modified, however. The
natural appetites and affections are forms of volition, it is true, but not
free products of the mind, for they take their origin in its connection
with the body. Further, not all perceptions have a sensuous origin; when
the soul makes free use of its ideas in imagination, especially when in
pure thought it dwells on itself, when without the interference of the
imagination it gazes on its rational nature, it is by no means passive
merely. Every act of the will, again, is accompanied by the consciousness
of volition. The _volitio_ is an activity, the _cogitatio volitionis_ a
passivity; the soul affects itself, is passively affected through its own
activity, is at the same instant both active and passive.

[Footnote 1: For d