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ORDER demands that we study first the depths of our
emotional life as illumined by sense cognition and then
those of our voluntary life as illumined by our
intellect. Progress in acquired virtue and, still more,
progress in infused virtue will reveal immense depths
and will clarify in particular the growth of charity in
the souls of the saints, both in their hours of trial
and in the joy of their apostolic triumphs.
Sensibility, the source of passion and emotion, is,
like sense knowledge and imagination, common to animals
and men. This sensibility we call sense appetite to
distinguish it from the will, which is a spiritual
faculty, common to man, angel, and God. Passions,
emotions, the movements of sense appetite arise when
sense knowledge or imagination puts before us a sense
object, attractive or repellent. Thus we note that the
desire for food appears under a peaceful form in the
dove and the lamb, but under a violent form in the
wolf, the tiger, and the lion.
The first among all passions, the source of all others,
is sense love, the love, for example, of the animal for
the food it needs. From this love rises a series of
passions: desire, joy, hope, audacity, hate, aversion,
sadness, despair, fear, and anger.
Passion is not always, but may become, keen, vehement,
dominating. In man the passions are meant to be ruled
and disciplined by reason and will. Thus ruled, they
are weapons which defend a great cause. On the
contrary, if they remain unruly and undisciplined, they
become vices: love becomes gluttony and lust, aversion
becomes jealousy and envy, audacity becomes
foolhardiness, fear becomes faintheartedness and
cowardice.
These wide contrasts, both in good and in evil, show
how deep and immense is the world of passion. Even in
the animal kingdom what heights are scaled by love and
hate: in the lion, for example, attacking his prey, in
the lioness defending her young!
But this width and depth of passion is still more
immense in man, because man's intellect grasps
universal good and man's will desires that boundless
good which is found in God alone. Hence when man's will
does not follow the straight road to God, when man
seeks supreme happiness not in God but in creatures,
then his concupiscence becomes insatiable, because he
has unlimited desires for a good that is limited. Man's
will was created to love supreme good and the
irradiations of that supreme good. Hence when the will
turns aside, its tendency to universal good continues
under that deviation, and this tendency of man's
highest faculty now becomes foolish, exercises a
lamentable influence on man's lower faculties. This
truth is a proof, a sad proof indeed, but still a
proof, of the spirituality of the soul. The ruins of
decay are a souvenir of grandeur.
Passion, says St. Thomas, [2] when it is truly natural,
that is, founded on man's nature, cannot be boundless,
because it desires only what nature demands, and the
sense good which nature demands is limited, in food,
for instance, and drink. Unnatural desire, on the
contrary, can be unlimited, because it arises from
reason gone astray, which sees unlimited good in a good
which is in reality limited. Thus a man who desires
wealth can desire it in limitless measure, can see in
wealth the ultimate purpose of his life.
Natural desire, then, in animal and man is limited. The
animal (e.g., wolf, tiger, lion) when it is sated no
longer seeks prey. But intelligent man when depraved
conceives and pursues ever more wealth and pleasure.
Hence quarrels among neighbors and endless wars among
nations. The miser is insatiable, likewise the man of
pleasure and the man of power. Love when thwarted
begets hate, and that hate becomes boundless. Hate,
says Baudelaire, is the cask of the pale Danaides.
These Danaides, says mythology, slew their husbands on
their wedding night, hence were condemned to fill a
cask without bottom: endless punishment of boundless
depravity.
If passions which man shares with beast be so deep and
wide, what must be the depth and breadth of the will
which is a spiritual faculty common to man and angels?
[3]
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