ity to the vanquished in war, which seldom appear among barbarous tribes; and with which it is hardly possible to conceive how men in such a state of society could have been inspired, but by a separate class of individuals in the community, who devoted themselves to the pacific profession of poetry, and to the cultivation of that creative power of the mind, which anticipates the course of human affairs, and presents, in prophetic vision, to the poet and the philosopher, the blessings which accompany the progress of reason and refinement.

Imagination multiplies our innocent enjoyments.-Nor must we omit to mention the important effects of imagination, in multiplying the sources of innocent enjoyment beyond what this limited scene affords. Not to insist on the noble efforts of genius, which have rendered this part of our constitution subservient to moral improvement, how much has the sphere of our happiness been extended, by those agreeable fictions which introduce us to new worlds, and make us acquainted with new orders of being! What a fund of amusement, through life, is prepared for one who reads in his childhood the fables of ancient Greece! They dwell habitually on the memory, and are ready, at all times, to fill up the intervals of business, or of serious reflection; and in his hours of rural retirement and leisure, they warm his mind with the fire of ancient genius, and animate every scene he enters, with the offspring of classical fancy.

Happy effect of agreeable anticipations of the future. — It is, however, chiefly in painting future scenes, that imagination loves to indulge herself, and her prophetic dreams are almost always favorable to happiness. By an erroneous education, indeed, it is possible to render this faculty an instrument of constant and of exquisite distress; but, in such cases, (abstracting from the influence of a constitutional melancholy,) the distresses of a gloomy imagination are to be ascribed, not to nature, but to the force of early impressions.

The common bias of the mind undoubtedly is, (such is the benevolent appointment of Providence,) to think favorably of the future; to overvalue the chances of possible good, and to

underrate the risk of possible evil; and, in the case of some fortunate individuals, this disposition remains after a thousand disappointments. To what this bias of our nature is owing, it

is not material for us to inquire; the fact is certain, and it is an important one to our happiness. It supports us under the real distresses of life, and cheers and animates all our labors; and although it is sometimes apt to produce, in a weak and indolent mind, those deceitful suggestions of ambition and vanity, which lead us to sacrifice the duties and the comforts of the present moment to romantic hopes and expectations; yet, it must be acknowledged, when connected with habits of activity, and regulated by a solid judgment, to have a favorable effect on the character, by inspiring that ardor and enthusiasm which both prompt to great enterprises, and are necessary to insure their success. When such a temper is united (as it commonly is) with pleasing notions concerning the order of the universe, and, in particular, concerning the condition and the prospects of man, it places our happiness, in a great measure, beyond the power of fortune. While it adds a double relish to every enjoyment, it blunts the edge of all our sufferings; and, even when human life presents to us no object on which our hopes can rest, it invites the imagination beyond the dark and troubled horizon, which terminates all our earthly prospects, to wander unconfined in the regions of futurity. A man of benevolence, whose mind is enlarged by philosophy, will indulge the same agreeable anticipations with respect to society; will view all the different improvements in arts, in commerce, and in the sciences, as coöperating to promote the union, the happiness, and the virtue of mankind; and amidst the political disorders resulting from the prejudices and follies of his own times, will look forward with transport to the blessings which are reserved for posterity in a more enlightened age.

CHAPTER VIII

OF REASON.

I. On the vagueness and ambiguity of the common philosophical language relative to this part of our constitution. The power of Reason, of which I am now to treat, is unquestionably the most important by far of those which are comprehended under the general title of intellectual. It is on the right use of this power, that our success in the pursuit both of knowledge and of happiness depends; and it is by the exclusive possession of it, that man is distinguished, in the most essential respects, from the lower animals. It is, indeed, from their subserviency to its operations, that the other faculties, which have been hitherto under our consideration, derive their chief value.

Popular meaning of the word Reason. Some remarkable instances of vagueness and ambiguity in the employment of words, occur in that branch of my subject of which I am now to treat. The word Reason, itself, is far from being precise in its meaning. In common and popular discourse, it denotes that power by which we distinguish truth from falsehood, and right from wrong; and by which we are enabled to combine means for the attainment of particular ends. Whether these different capacities are, with strict logical propriety, referred to the same power, is a question which I shall examine in another part of my work; but that they are all included in the idea which is generally annexed to the word Reason, there can be no doubt; and the case, so far as I know, is the same with the corresponding term in all languages whatever. The fact probably is, that this word was first employed to comprehend the principles, whatever they are, by which man is distinguished from the brutes; and afterwards came to be somewhat limited in its meaning, by

the more obvious conclusions concerning the nature of that distinction, which present themselves to the common sense of mankind. It is in this enlarged meaning that it is opposed to instinct by Pope:

"And reason raise o'er instinct as you can ;

In this 'tis God directs, in that 't is man."

It was thus, too, that Milton plainly understood the term, when he remarked, that smiles imply the exercise of Reason:

"Smiles from Reason flow,

To brutes denied: "

and still more explicitly in these noble lines:

:

"There wanted yet the master-work, the end
Of all yet done; a creature who, not prone
And brute as other creatures, but endued
With sanctity of Reason, might erect
His stature, and upright with front serene
Govern the rest, self-knowing; and from thence,
Magnanimous, to correspond with heaven;
But, grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends, thither with heart, and voice, and eyes,
Directed in devotion, to adore

And worship God Supreme, who made him chief
Of all his works."

Among the various characteristics of humanity, the power of devising means to accomplish ends, together with the power of distinguishing truth from falsehood, and right from wrong, are obviously the most conspicuous and important; and accordingly it is to these that the word Reason, even in its most comprehensive acceptation, is now exclusively restricted.*

* This, I think, is the meaning which most naturally presents itself to common readers, when the word Reason occurs in authors not affecting to aim at any nice logical distinctions; and it is certainly the meaning which must be annexed to it, in some of the most serious and important arguments in which it has ever been employed. In the following passage, for example, where Mr. Locke contrasts the light of Reason with that of Revelation, he plainly proceeds on the supposition, that it is competent to appeal to the former, as affording a standard of right and wrong, not less

More limited meaning of the word. By some philosophers, the meaning of the word has been of late restricted still further; to the power by which we distinguish truth from falsehood, and combine means for the accomplishment of our purposes ; the capacity of distinguishing right and wrong being referred to a separate principle or faculty, to which different names have been assigned in different ethical theories. The following pas sage from Mr. Hume contains one of the most explicit statements of this limitation which I can recollect: "Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and falsehood; the latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity,vice and virtue. Reason, being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery. Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition."

Reason distinguished from reasoning. Another ambiguity in the word Reason, it is of still greater consequence to point out at present; an ambiguity which leads us to confound our rational powers in general, with that particular branch of them known among logicians by the name of the discursive faculty. The affinity between the words reason and reasoning sufficiently accounts for this inaccuracy in common and popular language;

than of speculative truth and falsehood; nor can there be a doubt that, when he speaks of truth as the object of natural Reason, it was principally, if not wholly, moral truth, which he had in his view; "Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of Light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties. Revelation is natural reason, enlarged by a new set of discoveries, communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives that they come from God. So that he who takes away reason to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both, and does much the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope."