Chapter III: The Volitional Act and the Passions

[Sidenote: _The multiplicity of volitions and the struggle for unity._]

If the volitions followed one another, so to speak monadistically, each one shut up in itself, simple, impenetrable, indecomposible, it would be impossible to understand the moment that there is in them of arbitrary choice, of evil, of contradiction. But it is not so. The individual is solicited simultaneously by many or, more exactly, by infinite volitions, because the individual is at every moment a microcosm and in him is reflected the whole cosmos, and he reacts against the whole cosmos by willing in all directions. This infinity of volitions that is in every individual, can be proved by a very obvious fact: by what occurs in the contemplation of works of art, in which the same individual is able to reconstruct in himself the most various actions and psychological situations, and to feel himself in turn mild and sanguinary, austere and voluptuous, Achilles and Thersites. This would not happen, had he not to some extent in himself the experience of all these various volitional attitudes. But even if we wish to restrict ourselves to those volitions that are the most closely connected with the historical situation, thus limited as well as may be (every historical situation is in reality a cosmic situation), restricting ourselves to what are called volitions of the moment, we have always, if not a chaos, certainly a multiplicity, or at the least a duality, of volitions. Were the individual to abandon himself to that chaos, to that multiplicity, to that duality, he would instantly be lacerated, broken in pieces, destroyed. But he does not abandon himself to it, for he is an individual, volitional and operating just because he renounces that feigned richness of the infinite and that pernicious richness of multiplicity or duality, limiting himself on each occasion to one single volition, which is the volition corresponding to the given situation.

[Sidenote: _Multiplicity and unity as bad and good._]

This volition is consequently the result of a struggle in which the individual drives back all the other infinite volitions, to attach himself to that one alone which the given situation must and does arouse in him. And when the given volition does not affirm itself fully in this struggle, he falls a victim to multiplicity, in which is found that arbitrary choice attached to a volition which is not the one that should be willed, which he feels he wills and that he does will in a way. Hence the will becomes split up in different directions and contradictory, action not positive but negative, not truly action, but rather passivity.

The multiplicity of volitions explains then the moment of arbitrary choice, of evil, in the practical activity. This could be defined as the _volition that conquers the volitions,_ as its contrary arbitrary choice is _the contest of volitions with volition._

[Sidenote: _Excluded volitions and the passions or desires._]

The volitions that are driven back on every occasion and excluded, to make way for the volitional act, are variously denominated in ordinary speech and by psychologists as _appetites, tendencies, impulses, affections, wishes, velleities, desires, aspirations, passions._ But, as is usual with us, we do not intend to compose and defend such classes in a naturalistic and psychological sense, nor consequently to distinguish appetite from desire, or affection from passion, with boundaries that must of necessity be arbitrary and undulating. What is of real importance is only the distinction and the precise boundary, not arbitrary but real, between the volition and volitions, or, as we can now say, the relation between true and proper _volition_ and _the passions or desires._

[Sidenote: _Passions and desires as possible volitions._]

Passions or desires are and are not volitions: they are not volitions in respect to the volitional synthesis, which, by excluding, annuls them as such; they are on the other hand volitions, if considered in themselves, for they are capable of constituting the centre of new syntheses in changed conditions. It has been said that we cannot _will the impossible,_ but that we can perfectly well _desire it._ That is not exact, because the impossible, the contradictory, cannot even be the object of desire. No one wishes to find himself at the same moment in two different places, or to construct a triangle that should be at the same time a square: and even if such absurd wishes be manifested in words, the words will be absurd, but the desires will either be different from what is stated, or they will not exist even as desires. In a certain aspect all desires are desires of the impossible (and not only some of them), if, that is to say, we consider them as volitions that have not been realized and which cannot be realized at that moment: but from another point of view, they are all possible, and can indeed be precisely defined as _possible volitions._ This is proved by their becoming gradually actual as the actual situation changes. If (to choose a very simple illustration) an individual engaged in a certain work repel the desire for food and sleep with his volition and action, that desire is nothing at that point, as actual volition; but it does not for that reason lose its intrinsic volitional character, for when the hour for the repast or for sleep has struck, it passes from possibility to actuality and becomes the will for food and sleep. The sophism previously criticized, by means of which a bad and unsuccessful act, that is to say one that is dominated by passion and caprice, is justified by proving that it has had a legitimate motive and answers to a good intention, appeals to this character of possibility, possessed by all desires, and artfully changes it into a character of actuality, thus substituting for the given the imagined situation.

[Sidenote: _Volition as conflict with the passions._]

The relation that we have defined between volition and passions or desires explains why the will has often seemed to be nothing but a conflict with the passions, and life itself a battle (_vivere militare est,_) and at other times itself nothing but passions. The will is indeed homogeneous with the passions, and is opposed, not to the nature of the passions, which is its own nature, but to their multiplicity. For this reason, it has been said that only passion acts upon the passions: for the will is a passion among passions. Even the poet or the philosopher, who frees himself from the passions by objectifying them and making them material for æsthetic contemplation or for speculative research, succeeds in so doing, only because he is able to affirm the passion over the passions: the passion for poetry or for philosophy.

[Sidenote: _Critique of the freedom of choice._]

We must however beware of enunciating this relation in a false form, as happens with the theory called _freedom of choice,_ where the will is conceived as the faculty that chooses one volition from among others and makes it its own. The will does not choose a volition (save metaphorically), but so to speak chooses the choice itself, or makes itself will among the desires which are not will. Nor should the possible actions that are excluded be looked upon as constituting a graduation in respect to the spirit, which should will _a_ and not _b, c, d, e,_ and so on, attributing to them, nevertheless, different values, which can be symbolized by the declining series of numbers, passing downward from the will which is 10, to 9, 8, 7, 6, and so on. In reality, the volitions that are excluded (_b, c, d, e_) have no actual value, for the very reason that they are excluded. They may acquire it in other situations different from the one analyzed, but it is not possible to present the various situations together in one, and far less to determine them quantitatively and numerically, otherwise than in a symbolical manner. The propositions that present the will sometimes as the _strongest_ volition in respect to the passions or desires, and sometimes as the _weakest_ in respect to the passions, which seem to be the strongest, that is, according as we consider the active or the passive moment of the will, its victory or defeat, are also metaphorical and symbolical.

[Sidenote: _Significance of the so-called precedence of feeling over the volitional act._]

The relation established receives further light from the generally admitted theory of the necessary precedence of the _feelings_ as condition for the volitional act. The volitional act is preceded by a jostling multiplicity of volitions, by a swarm of passions and desires, which it dominates; and therefore it may seem that it follows, not the volition, but something different from the volition, to be called _feeling._ It is certainly different, but only because it is the _plural_ of that _singular._ The nature of the passions and desires in respect to the volitional act has not been clearly elucidated, and this is another of the reasons that have caused the customary category of "feeling" to appear and to be retained.

[Sidenote: _Polipathicism and apathicism._]

Finally and always through the established relation, the two opposed theories concerning the passions are excluded: that which makes the efficacious explanation of practical life to consist in giving free course to the passions, holding them all to be sacred as such: this theory could be called _polipathicism_; the other, which makes it consist of the eradication and destruction of all the passions, in order to give place to the exclusive domination of reason, of rational will, or of the will that really is will, and could therefore be called _apathicism._

Polipathicism has the defect of not taking account among the passions of that which is passion _par excellence,_ and which alone becomes actual, driving away the others: the will. Apathicism naturally possesses the opposite defect and takes account only of the will, and therefore not of that either, for the will becomes impotent when alone, just as in the other case it becomes a chaotic jumble of all the passions.

[Sidenote: _Erroneousness of both opposed theses._]

Such views as these are so openly unsustainable that they hardly appear at all in their strictness and purity, in the course of the history of philosophy, and then fugitively. But it is desirable to be attentive not to identify the theoretic formulæ given above with the programmes of certain groups, sects, associations, or individuals who have verbally proclaimed polipathicism and apathicism, whereas they have implied something very different, and could not have done otherwise. Complete polipathicism and complete apathicism could only be attained by the individual at the cost of disaggregation and annihilation. At the most, sects, groups, societies, and individuals have been able to conform to those formulæ as the simple expression of _tendencies;_ or those formulæ are applicable to them by _hyperbole,_ in the condemnation that it has been held desirable to inflict upon certain unhealthy tendencies. Certainly there are individuals whose passions are in such slight control as to suggest the absence of will; they run after every one of their desires, or leave their soul open to the onset of the passions that devastate it as the wind and the hail do the fields. Lorenzo the Magnificent (symbolizing with his wonted finesse a profoundly philosophical conflict) said to his son Piero, who was addicted to every pleasure and caprice: "And I never have any wish but you realize it for yourself."[1] The young rake whose adventures were sung by De Musset may afford an example of the same disaggregation, composed of the most violent kind of passions:

Ce n'était pas Rolla qui gouvernait sa vie:
C'étaient ses passions; il les laissait aller,
Comme un pâtre assoupi regarde l'eau couler....

But even in these extreme and typical cases the will and the dominion of the passions are never altogether absent: otherwise it would be impossible to live, not only a lifetime, but a day, an hour, a minute. Thus too on the other hand, no individual, be he ever so apathetic and ascetic, ever frees himself altogether from the dominion of the passions and the desires. We read in the life of some saint or beatified personage, whose name escapes me, how he had attained to so great a degree of perfection that whatever food he put into his mouth, he tasted nothing but dry straw. Leaving to specialists the inquiry as to how a stomach of so slight a capacity for distinguishing one aliment from another could perform its function, and also as to the consequences for social productiveness of so strangely perfected an individual, it is certain that in order to nourish himself and live, the saint in question must have had the periodical appetite or desire of straw for his food, if for nothing else. Apathy too is often nothing but a most violent and tenacious, though disordered, passion for ease. Activity in any case reasserts itself with the dissolving of apathy, a state nigh to inertia and to death, when it dissolves _grata vice veris et Favoni,_ that is, with the appearance of the desires, of those "suave impulses," those "heart-beats," that pain, and that pleasure, which Giacomo Leopardi depicted in his _Risorgimento,_ overcome with astonishment, as though face to face with the mystery of life.

[Sidenote: _Their historical and contingent meanings._]

The formulæ of polipathicism and of apathicism have had other contingent and historical meanings, but of a positive nature, which it is fitting to examine, in order to prevent the usual passage, so fruitful of errors, from philosophical to empirical theses. The return to the world and to nature, which is one of the characteristics of the Renaissance and of the Reformation itself; the rights of the passions, which is one of the traits of Romanticism in its initial period; neo-paganism, which has given to the Italy of our day its most lofty poetry in the work of Giosuè Carducci, were each in their turn nothing but beneficial reactions against the lazy monastic life of the Middle Ages, against Protestant pedantry, against degenerate Romanticism, which despised the real world and dreamed of contradictory ideals. On the other hand, in different times and circumstances, Christian ascesis, Franciscan poverty, and Puritan strictness were beneficial reactions. So true is this, that we are wont to unite in our admiration heroes of abstinence and heroes of the passions, assertors of the spirit and assertors of the flesh, for all, in different ways, because in different historical situations, willed always the elevation of humanity. Every one of those historical manifestations can be and has been blamed and satirized, but only in its decadence, where it has exhausted its proper function, and is no longer truly itself, but its own mask.--The friars of the stories of the sixteenth century are not the companions of St. Francis, as the indecent Italians of the late Renaissance are not the active merchants, philologists, and artists who promoted it, nor is there a greater lack of historical sense than the transference of the characteristics of the one to the other, as is the way of vulgar detractors and apologists. One and the same historical fact (as has been brilliantly said) always shows itself twice: the first time as _tragedy,_ the second as _comedy._

[Sidenote: _The domination of the passions and the will._]

The cases that we have recorded, which have seemed to represent unbridled or exhausted passion, possess not a pathological but a physiological character, in so far as they really consist of a domination, a volitional synthesis, which conquers and contains divergent and ruinous passions. And with this we have answered the question as to whether or no the passions can be dominated, and whether man be slave or free. We can dominate them, and in that domination is life; if we do not dominate them, we advance to meet death; to dominate or not to dominate them are the very poles of the will, positive and negative, and we cannot think of the one as being abolished without thinking of the other as also abolished.

But the labour of dominating them is hard, as all life, "sweet life," is hard. The passions, driven back and restrained again and again by the will, yet rage within us, tumultuous, though conquered. We tear out the cumbersome plants, but not their roots and seeds. The man who considers himself hardened to the trials of life, still feels and suffers: the man who seems calm is yet always agitated within. As the labour that is called physical deposits poison at the base of the organism; so does the labour called spiritual in the depths of the soul. Hence the bitterness in those men who have willed and laboured much; hence their _cupio dissolvi,_ their aspiration for that bourne where all is peace. The poet sublimely imagines old Luther, after his victories, in the midst of the people awakened by him to a new life:

Yet with a backward look, he sighed:
Call me, O God, to thee, for I am tired,
Nor without malediction can I pray!

[1] L. Domenichi, _Della scelta de motti, burle et facetie_ (Firenze, 1566), p. 14.