 Over and above the role they play in the preservation of the body, the passions also make a direct contribution to human happiness. In the concluding article of the Passions, Descartes goes so far as to say that “it is on the passions alone that all the good and evil of this life depends” (art. 212; CSM I 404). In the body of the article, he qualifies this claim, allowing that “the soul can have pleasures of its own. But the pleasures common to it and the body depend entirely on the passions.” His considered view on this question seems to be that the passions (particularly love and joy) form a valuable part of a human life, that the enjoyment of them is consistent with the happiness that is the natural product of virtue, but that happiness of the latter sort can be had even in the presence of harmful passions such as sadness or grief.