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. 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.