to time without any such efforts, the emotion gradually becomes weakened, and that moral condition is produced which we call selfishness, or hardness of heart. Fictitious tales of sorrow appear to have a similar tendency;-the emotion is produced without the corresponding conduct; and when this habit has been much indulged the result seems to be, that a cold and barren sentimentalism is produced, instead of the habit of active benevolence. If fictitious narratives be employed for depicting scenes of vice, another evil of the greatest magnitude is likely to result from them, even though the conduct exhibited should be shown to end in remorse and misery: for by the mere familiarity with vice, an injury is done to the youthful mind, which is in no degree compensated by the moral at the close.

Imagination, therefore, is a mental power of extensive influence, and capable of being turned to important purposes in the cultivation of individual character. But to be so, it must be kept under the strict control both of reason and of virtue. If it be allowed to wander at discretion, through scenes of imagined wealth, ambition, frivolity, or pleasure, it tends to withdraw the mind from the important pursuits of life, to weaken the habit of attention, and to impair the judgment. It tends, in a most material manner, to prevent the due exercise of those nobler powers which are directed to the cultivation both of science and virtue. The state of a mind which has yielded itself to the influence of this delusive habit cannot be more forcibly represented than in the words of an eloquent writer:-"The influence of this habit of dwelling on the beautiful fallacious forms of imagination will accompany the mind into the most serious speculations, or rather musings, on the real world, and what is to be done in it, and expected; as the image which the eye acquires from looking at any dazzling object still appears before it wherever it turns. The vulgar materials that constitute the

actual economy of the world will rise up to its sight in fictitious forms, which it cannot disenchant into plain reality, nor will even suspect to be deceptive. It cannot go about with sober, rational inspection, and ascertain the nature and value of all things around it. Indeed, such a mind is not disposed to examine te with any careful minuteness the real condition of things. It is content with ignorance, because environed with something more delicious than such knowledge in the paradise which imagination creates. In that paradise it walks delighted, till some imperious circumstance of real life call it thence, and gladly escapes thither again when the avocation is past. There every thing is beautiful and noble as could be desired to form the residence of an angel. If a tenth part of the felicities that have been enjoyed, the great actions that have been performed, the beneficent institutions that have been established, and the beautiful objects that have been seen in that happy region, could have been imported into this terrestrial place,-what a delightful thing it would have been to awake each morning to see such a world

once more.

To the same purpose are the words of another writer of the highest authority:-"To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. He who has nothing external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not, for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire; amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combina

Foster's Essays.

tions, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow. In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favou ite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in tine despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish."*

SECTION IV.

OF REASON OR JUDGMENT.

THE most simple view which we can take of rea son probably is, that it is the exercise of mind by which we compare facts with each other, and mental impressions with external things. The applications of this mental process may be referred to the following heads:

:

I. We compare facts with each other, so as to trace their relations, connexions, and tendencies; and to distinguish the connexions which are incidental from those which are fixed and uniform.

What we call the relations of things, whether referring to external events or mental processes, comprehend all those facts which form the great objects of human knowledge, with respect either to the individuals, or their tendencies towards each other.

• Johnson's Rasselas.

They may be briefly enumerated in the following

manner:

1. Relations of character,-or those marks, characters, or properties by which a substance may be recognised, and may be distinguished from all others; for example, the botanical characters of a plant-the chymical properties of a mineral-the symptoms of a disease-sensible properties of colour, taste, smell, &c.-the mental endowments and moral qualities of individual men.

2. Relations of resemblance and analogy, arising out of a comparison of the qualities of various individual substances or events. These admit of various degrees. When there is a close agreement between two events or classes of events, it constitutes resemblance: when there are points of difference, it is analogy. In the latter case, we then trace the degrees of analogy, depending upon the number of points in which the resemblance holds and the number of points in which there is a difference. On the relations of resemblance also depend the arts of arrangement and classification; and the use of those general terms by which we learn to express a great number of individual objects by a single term, derived from certain characters in which they agree, such as solids, fluids, quadrupeds, &c. We find a certain number of substances which agree so much in their properties, that we class them together as one species. We then find other substances, which agree with these in a certain number of their properties, but differ in others. We dismiss the latter, and retain those only in which they all agree, and so form the whole into a genus. The individuals forming the genus are still found to agree in some of their properties with various other substances, and, by leaving out of view those in which they differ, we again form this still larger number into a class or order.

3. Nearly connected with the former, but still more extensive, is that important process by which,

N

among a great series of facts, we trace an accordance, and thus deduce from the whole a general fact or general principle.

4. Relations of composition; comprehending the resolution of a substance into its elements or constituent parts, the connexion of the parts as constituting a whole of the whole to the parts, and of the parts to each other.

5. Relations of causation, or the tendencies of bodies to produce or be followed by certain actions upon each other in certain circumstances. These refer chiefly to that uniform sequence of events from which we derive our idea of the one being the cause of the other. But the class likewise includes other relations arising out of the same subject; such as the relation of two events as the joint causes of a common effect, or the joint effects of a common cause; or as forming links in a chain of sequences in which we have still to look for other events as the true antecedents or final results. It includes also that most important mental process by which, from the properties of a known effect, we infer the powers and properties of an unknown cause.

6. Relations of degree and proportion, as in those truths and relations which are the subjects of mathematics.

7. The important question of moral relations, which does not properly belong to the present part of our inquiry, including the relation of certain actions to the great standard of moral rectitude, and to those principles which bind men together in the harmonies of social and domestic intercourse.

These appear to include the principal relations of things which the mind requires to investigate in an intellectual point of view. The facts respecting them are acquired by attention and memory; but it is the province of reason to separate from the mass so acquired those which are incidental and temporary from those which are uniform,-to ascertain, for example, those characters by which a substance may