ABSTRACT
Psychology, as the study of human nature or of the mental processes of man, is one of the oldest studies. The first comprehensive treatises on psychology were written by Aristotle; but even his predecessors had given considerable attention to the subject. In its early history the study was intimately connected with biology and medicine, as part of the study of human behaviour; and also with speculative philosophy and theology, on account of its alleged bearing on the question of the immortality of the soul. “Passions,” in the narrower sense of the term, are defined by Rene Descartes as “feelings or emotions of the soul which we relate specially to it, and which are caused, maintained, and fortified by some movement of the spirits”. Descartes’ account of the passions, as we have seen, was more physiological than psychological, and his physiology was mainly of the traditional and speculative type.
