We must admit that Aristotle, who has so admirably depicted young and old men, is weak on the subject of manhood. Boileau, translating Horace, makes of it a far more clear and exact picture: "Manhood, more ripe, puts on a wiser look, succeeds with those in power, intrigues, and spares itself, thinks of holding its own against the blows of fate, and far on in the now looks forth to the _to be_." =175. Passions.=--Character, considered from a strictly philosophical standpoint, is nothing more than the various combinations which the passions, whether natural or acquired, which exist in man, form in each individual, so that there is, in some respect, double reason for treating these two subjects separately. But, in the first place, the divers movements of the soul take, by usage, the name of passions, only when they reach a certain degree of acuteness, and, as Bacon puts it, of disease. In the second, passions are the elements which in divers quantities and proportions compose what is termed character; it is from this double point of view that we must speak of them separately. If we consider the passions from a psychological[153] standpoint, we shall find that they are nothing more than the natural inclinations of the human heart. We have to consider them here especially from a _pathological_ point of view (if it may be permitted to say so), that is, as diseases of the human heart. The character of passions regarded as diseases, is the following: 1. They are _exclusive_. A man who has become enslaved by a passion, will know nothing else, will listen to nothing else; he will sacrifice to that passion not only his reason and his duty, but his other inclinations, and even his other passions also. The passion of gambling or of drinking will stifle all the rest, ambition, love, even the instinct of self-preservation. 2. Passion, as a disease, is in a _violent_ condition; it is impetuous, disordered, very like insanity. 3. Although there may be fits of passion, sudden and fleeting, which rise and fall again in the same instant, we generally give the name of passions only to movements which have become _habitual_. Passions then are habits; applied to things base, they become _vices_. 4. There is a diagnosis[154] of passions as there is of diseases. They betray themselves outwardly by external signs which are their symptoms (acts, gestures, physiognomy), and inwardly, by first indications or what was formerly called _prodromes_, which are their forerunners (disturbance, agitation, etc.). 5. Passion, like disease, has its history: it has its regular course, its crisis, and termination. The _Imitation of Jesus Christ_ gives in a few words the history of a passion: "In the beginning a simple _thought_ presents itself to the mind; this is followed by a vivid _fancy_; then comes _delectation_, a bad _impulse_, and finally the _consent_. Thus does the evil one gradually enter the soul."[155]