While the term base can have several meanings, the following seems most apt in your example
(Of a person or a person’s actions or feelings) without moral principles; ignoble:
the electorate’s baser instincts of greed and selfishness
we hope his motives are nothing so base as money
Oxford Dictionaries Online
The phrase base passions would generally refer to those drives that are instinctual, if not noble - acquisitiveness, lust, anger, fear.
The reference seems to suggest that these ignoble inclinations can lead to more exalted determinations.
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