The passions of the soule in three books the first, treating of the passions in generall, and occasionally of the whole nature of man. The second, of the number, and order of the passions, and the explication of the six primitive ones. The third, of particular passions. By R. des Cartes. And translated out of French into English.

The 73th Article. What Astonishment is.

ANd this surprize hath so much power, to cause the spirits in the cavities of the brain, to bend their course from thence to the place where the impression of the object admired is, that it sometimes drives them all thither, and finds them such work to conserve this impressi∣on, that there are none which passe from thence into the muscles, nor yet so much as deviate any way from the first tracts they followed into the brain: this causes all the body to be unmovea∣ble like a statue and that one can onely perceive the first represented face of the object, and con∣sequently not acquire any further knowledge of it; it is thus when a man is said to be astonish∣ted:

for astonishment is an excesse of admiration, which can never be but evill.