PASSION is a word of which, as Dr Reid observes, the meaning is not precisely ascertained either in common discourse or in the writings of philosophers. In its original import, it denotes every feeling of the mind occasioned by an extrinsic cause; but it is generally used to signify some agitation of mind, opposed to that state of tranquillity in which a man is most master of himself. That it was thus used by the Greeks and Romans, is evident from Cicero's rendering passio, the word by which the philosophers of Greece expressed it, by perturbatio in Latin. In this sense of the word, passion cannot be itself a distinct and independent principle of action, but only an occasional degree of vehemence given to those dispositions, desires, and affections, which are at all times present to the mind of man; and that this is its proper sense, we require no other proof than that passion has always been conceived to bear an analogy to a storm at sea or to a tempest in the air. See MORAL PHILOSOPHY.