Leaving, therefore, the question concerning the origin of our active principles, and of the moral faculty, to be the fubject of future difcuffion, I fhall conclude this Section with a few remarks of a inore practical

nature.

It has been fhewn by different writers, how much of the beauty and fublimity of material objects arise from the ideas and feelings which we have been taught to affociate with them. The impreffion produced on the external fenfes of a poet, by the most striking scene in nature, is precifely the fame with what is produced on the fenfes of a peasant or a tradesman : yet how different is the degree of pleafure refulting from this impreffion! A great part of this difference is undoubtedly to be afcribed, to the ideas and feelings which the habitual ftudies and amufements of the poet have affociated with his organical perceptions.

A fimilar obfervation may be applied to all the various objects of our purfuit in life. Hardly any one of them is appreciated by any two men in the fame manner; and frequently what one man confiders as effential to his happiness, is regarded with indifference or diflike by another. Of thefe differences of opinion, much is, no doubt, to be ascribed to a diversity of conftitution, which renders a particular employment of the intellectual or active powers agreeable to one man, which is not equally fo to another. But much is alfo to be ascribed to the effect of affociation; which, prior to any experience of human life, connects pleafing ideas and pleafing feelings with different objects, in the minds of different perfons.

In confequence of these affociations, every man appears to his neighbour to pursue the object of his wifhes, with a zeal difproportioned to its intrinfic value; and the philofopher (whofe principal enjoyment arifes from fpeculation) is frequently apt to fmile at the ardour with which the active part of mankind pursue, what appear to him to be mere fhadows. The view of human affairs, fome writers have carried fo far, as to reprefent life as a scene of mere illufions, where the mind refers to the objects around it, a colouring which exifts only in itself; and where, as the Poet expreffes it,

"Opinion gilds with varying rays,

"Those painted clouds which beautify our days."

It may be queftioned, if these representations of human life be useful or juft. That the cafual affociations which the mind forms in childhood, and in early youth, are frequently a fource of inconvenience and of mifconduct, is fufficiently obvious; but that this tendency of our nature increases, on the whole, the fumof human enjoyment, appears to me to be indifputable; and the inftances in which it misleads us from our duty and our happiness, only prove, to what important ends it might be fubfervient, if it were kept under proper regulation.

Nor do these representations of life (admitting them in their full extent) justify the practical inferences which have been often deduced from them, with refpect to the vanity of our pursuits. In every cafe, indeed, in which our enjoyment depends upon affociation, it may be faid, in one sense, that it arises from the mind itself; but it does not therefore follow, that the external object which custom has rendered the caufe or the occafion

of

395 of agreeable emotions, is indifferent to our happiness. The effect which the beauties of nature produce on the mind of the poet, is wonderfully heightened by affociation; but his enjoyment is not, on that account, the lefs exquifite: nor are the objects of his admiration of the less value to his happiness, that they derive their principal charms from the embellishments of his fancy.

It is the bufinefs of education, not to counteract, in any instance, the established laws of our conftitution, but to direct them to their proper purposes. That the influence of early affociations on the mind might be employed, in the most effectual manner, to aid our moral principles, appears evidently from the effects which we daily fee it produce, in reconciling men to a course of action which their reafon forces them to condemn; and it is no lefs obvious that, by means of it, the happiness of human life might be increased, and its pains diminished, if the agreeable ideas and feelings which children are fo apt to connect with events and with fituations which depend on the caprice of fortune, were firmly affociated in their apprehenfions with the duties of their stations, with the purfuits of fcience, and with thofe beauties of nature which are open to all.

Thefe obfervations coincide nearly with the ancient ftoical doctrine concerning the influence of imagination* on morals; a fubject, on which many important remarks, (though expreffed in a form different from that which modern philofophers have introduced, and, perhaps, not altogether fo precife and accurate,) are to

* According to the ufe which I make of the words Imagination and Affociation, in this work, their effects are obviously diftinguish. able. I have thought it proper, however, to illuftrate the difference between them a little more fully in Note [R].

be

be found in the Discourses of Epictetus, and in the Meditations of Antoninus *. This doctrine of the Stoical fchool, Dr. Akenfide has in view in the following paffage :

"Action treads the path

"In which Opinion fays he follows good,
"Or flies from evil; and Opinion gives
"Report of good or evil, as the scene
"Was drawn by fancy, lovely or deform'd:
"Thus her report can never there be true,
"Where fancy cheats the intellectual eye
"With glaring colours and distorted lines.
"Is there a man, who at the found of death
"Sees ghaftly shapes of terror conjur'd up,

"And black before him: nought but death-bed groans
"And fearful prayers, and plunging from the brink
"Of light and being, down the gloomy air,
"An unknown depth? Alas! in fuch a mind,
"If no bright forms of excellence attend
"The image of his country; nor the pomp
"Of facred fenates, nor the guardian voice
"Of justice on her throne, nor aught that wakes
"The conscious bofom with a patriot's flame:
"Will not Opinion tell him, that to die,
"Or ftand the hazard, is a greater ill

"Than to betray his country? And in act
"Will he not chufe to be a wretch and live?
"Here vice begins then †."

* See what Epiletus has remarked on the χρησις διὰ δεῖ φαντα (Arrian, l. i. c. 12.) Όσα αν πολλακις φαντασθής, τοιαύτη σου εσται ἡ διάνοια. βάπτεται γαρ ύπο των φαντασιων ἡ ψυχη. βαπτε εν BOOTY, TO OUVEXEIR TWY TOISTWY Çartaciwy, &c. &c. Anton. I. v. c. 16.

+ Pleasures of Imagination, b. iii.

SECTION IV.

General Remarks on the Subjects treated in the foregoing
Sections of this Chapter.

IN perufing the foregoing Sections of this Chapter, I am aware, that fome of my readers may be apt to think that many of the observations which I have made, might easily be refolved into more general principles. I am also aware, that, to the followers of Dr. Hartley, a fimilar objection will occur against all the other parts of this work; and that it will ap pear to them the effect of inexcufable prejudice, that I should stop short fo frequently in the explanation of phenomena; when he has accounted in fo fatisfactory a manner, by means of the affociation of ideas, for all the appearances which human nature exhibits.

To this objection, I fhall not feel myfelf much interested to reply, provided it be granted that my observations are candidly and accurately ftated, fo far as they reach. Suppofing that in fome cafes I may have stopped short too foon, my fpeculations, although they may be cenfured as imperfect, cannot be confidered as standing in oppofition to the conclufions of more successful inquirers.

May I be allowed farther to obferve, that fuch views of the human mind as are contained in this work, (even fuppofing the objection to be well

founded,)