in the old philosophy, a term applied to an appetite or a part of the soul, where anger and the other passions, which animate us against things difficult or odious, were supposed to reside.

Of the eleven kinds of passions attributed to the soul, philosophers ascribe five to the irascible appetite; viz. wrath, boldness, fear, hope, and despair: the other six are charged on the concupiscible appetite, viz. pleasure, pain, desire, aversion, love, and hatred.

Plato divided the soul into three parts; the reasonable, irascible, and concupiscible parts. The two last, according to that philosopher, are the corporeal and mortal parts of the soul, which give rise to our passions.

Plato fixes the seat of the irascible appetite in the heart; and of the concupiscible in the liver; as the two sources of blood and spirits, which alone affect the mind.