of the Sun, or Utopia, or Oceana, or the New Atlantis — and are exempt from all the defects of the world's known statesmanship. To its lofty sense, the created universe is one Poem God's grand Epic-and as the solemn recital proceeds, imagination essays, with trembling hand, to write down, if but an episode, a line, that all time may read. Not that it is ever satisfied with its own productions. The finest materials with which it works are too coarse and intractable. Even after its most successful efforts, its cherished vision remains unrevealed; it carries about with it an unrealized idea.

5. We have said that the imagination, like the understanding, abstracts and generalizes. But, unlike that faculty, it modifies our conceptions, recombines them on principles of its own, or, abstracting a single element, dispenses with the rest as irrelevant to its creative purpose. It aims not, like the understanding, at the conviction which results from evidence, but at the emotion which flows from sympathy. And, beyond this, it is, in the highest sense, synthetic. Its productions are brought forth before the theory which accounts for and explains them. Homer, and the great classic dramatists, precede Aristotle. The highest criticism is but an exposition of laws already synthesized in the great works of genius. Like the sciences themselves, the productions of genius are found to be based on fundamental principles. But the imagination does not wait for the theory of these principles. It silently and unconsciously embodies them. And when, subsequently, its productions are analyzed, the logic of genius and of nature are found to be the same. Sublimity and truth are one.

6. This latent amenableness of the imagination to the majesty of law, distinguishes it from the mere play of fancy with which it is often confounded. The former is the great tidal wave obeying a planetary impulse, while the latter is only the ripple and wave of the surface occasioned by the action of the air. And the ground of this difference appears to be, that it is the province of imagination to realize the ideal, while fancy only adorns and idealizes the real: the former symbolizes the essences of things, while the latter only beautifies the actual.

7. We have seen that, like the reason, and rooted in it, imagination is synthetic. But while the reason finds its necessary truths affirmed and expounded by the objects and events of the existing universe, it is the high prerogative of the imagination to illustrate the same truths by additional ideal creations.

If

the reason points in the direction of that which must be, the imagination points in addition, and for the same end, to that which might be. In feeble, but yet loyal imitation of Him whose universe is but a varied utterance of the beautiful and the sublime, symbolical of the true, the imagination comes after and essays to take possession of every unoccupied spot with new and congenial varieties of its own. And thus it may be regarded as the mediating power between the necessary and the already existent, adding its own little copy of a creation-week to the six days work of the Divine Creator, and showing, that if He chose to pause at a given point of the great process, it was not because the archetypes of things were all embodied and exhausted, but, as one reason, because He willed not to commit to unconscious matter the representation of all imaginable ideas, but to reserve for a creature made, in this respect, in His own image, the conscious representation of certain archetypes left unembodied, and thus to be ever carrying onwards the process of the Divine manifestation.

as a

8. But the province of the imagination is far from being restricted to the possible in nature and in the intellectual world. Its influence variously affects the emotions, the will, and the conscience. What Bacon hath finely said of poetry* daughter of imagination, may be justly affirmed of the imagination itself. "There is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, Poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical; because true history propoundeth successes and issues of action not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore Poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed Providence. And therefore it was even thought to have some participation of, divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind." In the light of these views, we see the truth of the affirmation, that "poetry is more philosophical than history."† Clearing the bounds of the particular and the actual, imagination beholds things already in their unity and completeness. It is a powerful auxiliary to every motive drawn from the remote and the invisible, antedating the final day, and placing even now the

* De Augm. Scient., lib. ii. cap. 13.

† Aristot. de Poet. cap. 9.

whip of scorpions in the hands of remorse, and the aureola around the head of suffering virtue. However strong the Christian's conviction, on independent grounds, of a heavenly state, yet it is on the wings of imagination that he ascends and foretastes its blessedness. However bright and expanded the prospect of human improvement in the present state may be, it is as nothing compared with the interminable career of glory which stretches before the eye of imagination in worlds beyond. Rich, then, as we should have regarded the newly-created man, could we have looked on him when first he stood forth as heir of the world, how incomparably more opulent was he as the heir of things which he could then, at best, only imagine: the one, measurable, passing; the other, it hath not yet entered even into his mind fully to conceive. By the former, God manifested himself to man indirectly, and from without; by the latter, God directly mirrored himself, however partially and faintly, in the mind itself, and man beholds his Maker in the image.

SECT. V.-Man Emotional.

1. In the view which we have taken of man's mental constitution, we have found him endowed with the means of intellectually interpreting the Divine manifestation; but how are these means to be put and kept in activity so as to secure their end? Polished and capacious as the mirror of his mind may be, and capable of reflecting every object and hue that passes before it, is it, like a mirror, to be stationary and passive while the universe revolves around it, and to reflect every object alike with cold and mirror-like indifference? For, if he is actively to employ his knowing faculties as means of knowledge, and if, as external and internal phenomena differ in their character and importance, he is to estimate them accordingly, he must be endowed with a corresponding variety of susceptibilities. In other words

2. If the various and complicated phenomena of matter and mind with the existence of which man has the means of becoming acquainted, be to be studied and appreciated, as means of Divine manifestation, he must possess the susceptibility of being moved and affected by them, in a manner answering both to their positive character and importance, and to the relation in which he stands to them.

3. This is the susceptibility of emotion; a term originally de

noting, perhaps, a movement from within, or the power of the mind to affect the body externally. Not that this is the necessary effect of emotion, for the mental affection may be too placid to produce any external sign, or be so powerful and deep as to leave the material surface, like the centre circle of a whirlpool, unruffled. As an original and underived part of our nature, it admits not of description to him who is not already conscious of it. All that we can do is to point out what it is not, or wherein it differs from those parts of our nature with which we are most liable to confound it, and to indicate the circumstances in which it arises, and thus to clear and authenticate our conception of what it truly is.

4. In contradistinction from the appetites, such as hunger and thirst, which are bodily, and which have their immediate origin in the body, an emotion is an affection of the mind. The former relate directly and entirely to external and material objects; the latter relates immediately to internal states, for even when traceable to external objects, its relation to them is only indirect, or through the medium of perception.

Sensation depends on organs of sense, and is directly related to external objects, for it is occasioned by their presence; emotion depends not directly on such organs, but on the sensations themselves, and on the intellectual states which follow.

An intellectual act or state has none of the vivid feeling which belongs to an emotion; and differs from it as remembering an object differs from the love or hatred of an object remembered. The former is the antecedent of the latter; and we can conceive of a being so constituted as that the intellectual act might have existed without the emotion.

We may further remark that Affection for an object denotes the tendency of the mind to have emotions of a certain class awakened by it, the actual repetition of such emotions, and also the state or habit of the mind resulting from such repetition. Sensibility implies a highly emotional tendency, or a great susceptibility to emotional appeals. By Taste is meant disciplined sensibility, or sensibility rendered discriminating by emotional experience, and therefore as prompt in its decisions as the emotions themselves. Properly speaking, perhaps, the objects of taste are inanimate, while affection embraces sentient being. Passion expresses the violence of an emotion, or an affection; and hence it is not unfrequently employed as a synonyme for anger, that brevis furor, and most raging of the passions. Temperament denotes, not emotion itself, but a characteristic mental

susceptibility, predisposing the mind to certain classes of emotion. Thus, a mind constitutionally grave or gay, melancholy or cheerful, is peculiarly susceptible to corresponding emotions of gloom or joy.

5. As man exists for an end, and his constitution is the appointment of means to that end, it may be expected, first, that he will be the subject of different kinds of emotion in harmony with the attainment of that end. Now this requirement appears to involve the following facts, each of which may be regarded as a classifying law of the emotions.

(1.) The appropriative. That everything conducive to the end of his being, and capable of being obtained by him, should be regarded by him as an object of desire. Thus, as the very end for which life is bestowed on him at all supposes the continuance of life, at least, for a time, he is the subject of an instinctive desire for its continued existence. And innumerable external objects are ever appealing to the desire and keeping it in play.

6. The continuance of life, as well as its design, imply that he is meant for activity. He desires it― desires it even for its own sake as well as for its practical results; for it is attended with feelings of pleasure which may easily be kindled to cheerfulness and delight. And external nature, even in Eden, was calculated to call forth his activity; for he had "to dress it and to keep it."

7. Do the constitution of man, as far as we have studied it, and the design of that constitution, suppose a thirst for knowledge? This desire is evinced by the infant even before he possesses the power of uttering it; nor is there any emotion whose influence is later felt. It observes an order of development according to the order of our wants. Beginning in childish curiosity, it passes through all the intermediate stages of inquiry, to a profound and far-sighted philosophy; and when stopped by any objects short of ultimate facts, it feels as if it had a right to know them, and evinces increasing restlessness and resentment at the obstacles, till it is gratified. So ardent and instinctive is our desire for knowledge, that the pursuit is commenced for its own sake alone, and respecting objects which may never come into our possession. The only reason we can assign for instituting most of our inquiries, is because the subjects to which they relate are new and unknown to us. And, as we advance, the desire which impels us onwards, the pleasure which attends the perception of progress, and the delight resulting from suc