Introduction

This was the last work Descartes published in his lifetime, and it grew from years of correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. The brilliant princess pressed him: if mind and body are two utterly different substances, how do they act on each other? And how are we to govern our emotions? In the book Descartes first explains physiologically how the passions arise in the body through the 'animal spirits', then names six primitive passions, wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness, analyses the many emotions compounded from them, and finally proposes that the passions be governed by the virtue of générosité, a noble self-mastery. It is the beginning of the modern psychology of the emotions.