Note that this method, although indirect, is very potent; for it ends by
really transforming the passions into their opposites. Persuade fear that
there is less peril in marching forward than in flight and that the most
salutary flight is the flight forward and you have changed fear to
courage.--But such an influence of the will over the passions is
extraordinarily unlikely: it will never take place.--Yes, by habit! Habit
too is a passion, or, if you will, a passive state, like that of memory or
the association of ideas, and there are men possessed only of that passion.
But the will, by the means which have been described, by imposing an act, a
first act, creates a commencement of habit, by imposing a second confirms
that habit, by imposing a third strengthens it, and so on. In plain words,
the will, by reasoning with the passions and reasoning with them
incessantly, brings them back to what is good in them and ends by bringing
them back there permanently, so that it arrives at having only the passions
it desires, or, if you prefer it, for it is the same thing, at having only
the passion for good. Morality consists in loving noble passions, as was
later observed by Vauvenargues, and that means to love all the passions,
each for what is good in it, that is to reduce each passion to what real
goodness is inherent in it, and that is to gather all the passions into
one, which is the passion of duty.

THE METHOD OF DESCARTES.--As has been observed, not only had
Descartes influence through all that he wrote, but it was by his method
that he has exerted the greatest and most durable sway, and that is why we
conclude with the examination of his method. It is all contained in this:
to accept nothing as true except what is evident; to accept as true all
that is evident. Descartes therefore made evidence the touchstone of
certainty. But mark well the profound meaning of this method: what is it
that gives me the assurance of the evidence of such or such an idea? How
shall I know that such an idea is really evident to me? Because I see it in