Note 401 — Chapter IX · SOUL-IMAGE AND LIFE-FEELING

The evolution of meaning in the Classical words pathos and passico corresponds with this. The second was formed from the first only in the Imperial period, and carried its original sense in the “Passion” of Christ. It was in the early Gothic times, and particularly in the language of the Franciscan “Zealots” and the disciples of Joachim of Floris, that its meaning underwent the decisive reversal. Expressing thenceforward a condition of profound excitement which strained to discharge itself, it became finally a generic name for all spiritual dynamic; in this sense of strong will and directional energy it was brought into German as Leidenschaft by Zesen in 1647.