rather, which enables them to become bad. Therefore, in each passion no
matter what it be, it is always possible to distinguish between the passion
itself, which is always good, and the excess, the deviation, the
degradation or corruption of this passion which constitutes, if it be
desired to call it so, an evil passion, and this is what Descartes
demonstrates, passion by passion, in the fullest detail, in his _Treatise
on the Passions_.

THE PART OF THE SOUL.--If it is thus, what will be the part of the
soul (the soul is the will)? It will be to abandon itself to good passions,
or more accurately to the good that is in all passions, and to reduce the
passions to be "nothing more than themselves." In courage, for example,
there is courage and temerity. The action of the will, enlightened by the
judgment, will consist in reducing courage to be nothing but courage. In
fear, there is cowardice and there is the feeling of self-preservation
which, according to Descartes, is the foundation of fear and which is a
very good passion. The action of the soul is to reduce fear to simple
prudence.

But _how_ will the will effect these metamorphoses or at least these
departures, these separations, these reductions to the due proportion?
_Directly_ it can effect _nothing_ upon the passions; it cannot
_remove_ them; it cannot even remove the baser portions of them; but
it can exercise influence over them by the intermediary of reasoning; it
can lead them to the attentive consideration of the thought that they carry
with them, and by this consideration modify them. For instance, if it is a
question of fear, the soul forces fear to consider that the peril is much
less than was imagined, and thus little by little brings it back to simple
prudence.