66

The same remark applies to the active operations of the intellect, which we have formerly made, in regard to the benevolent affections; and it has an equally close connection with our present subject. They do not depend for their gratification upon success in the pursuit of their objects. Their labours are their reward. Probably the happiest men in existence, sua si bona norint," are persons engaged in literature and science, as an employment. It is to be regretted, that they are not always sufficiently aware of the above remunerative points in the nature of their exertions. The reason of this is probably to be found in the extensive tendency of those who conduct the education of our youth to encourage ambition as the principal motive to such exertions. -How can that boy learn to value the luxuries of science or literature, who is only taught to appreciate them as a means of obtaining applause?

There may be, and in some cases I have witnessed, a very beneficial use of intellectual power, in averting insanity, when the patient has been able to apply the resources of his understanding to the regulation of his mind, under a consciousness of his own predisposition. It is needless to observe, that the possession of very high talents is

presupposed in him, who can be entrusted with such an application of his intellect. But insanity constitutes no exception to the great law of our nature, which in some degree places in our own hands the remedies of all the diseases with which we are visited. The modes in which the patient may be taught thus to minister to himself, will be considered in another part. I cannot forbear introducing here some extracts from a beautiful letter, in which the late Sir James Mackintosh at once recognizes the possibility of such surveillance of self, and ascribes it to an illustrious, though unfortunate, friend.*

66

"That the mind of a good man," he observes, may approach independence of external things, is a truth which no man ever doubted who was worthy to understand it: but you, perhaps, afford the first example of the moral nature, looking at the understanding itself as something that is only the first of its instruments. I cannot think of this without a secret elevation of soul, not unattended, I hope, with improvement. You are, perhaps, the first that has reached this superiority. With so fine an understanding, you have the humility to consider its disturbance as a blessing, so far as it improves your moral system.

*The Reverend Robert Hall.

The same principles, however, lead you to keep every instrument of duty and usefulness in repair, and the same habits of feeling will afford you the best chance of doing so.

"We are all accustomed to contemplate with pleasure the suspension of the ordinary operations of the understanding in sleep, and to be even amused by its nightly wanderings from its course in dreams. From the commanding eminence which you have gained, you will gradually familiarize your mind to consider its other aberrations as only more rare than sleep and dreams; and in process of time they will cease to appear to you much more horrible. You will then be delivered from that constant dread, which so often brings on the very evil dreaded; and which, as it clouds the whole of human life, is itself a greater calamity than any temporary disease. dread of this sort darkened the days of Johnson; and the fears of Rousseau seem constantly to have realized themselves. But, whoever has brought himself to consider a disease of the brain as differing only in degree from a disease of the lungs, has robbed it of that mysterious horror, which forms its chief malignity. If he were to do this by undervaluing intellect, he would indeed gain only a low quiet at the expense of mental dignity.

Some

But you do it by feeling the superiority of a moral nature over intellect itself."

It is, perhaps, unnecessary to notice how high a strain of intellect that man must possess, who can reason himself into the conviction which this last sentence expresses.

But in order that we should be able to prosecute the operations of the intellect without danger from exhaustion, (a danger which leads to results more belonging to the head of Imbecility, than of Insanity,) we are benevolently provided with another faculty, which it will be my business next to consider.

CHAPTER IV.

Imagination, that property by which we recognize absent objects of perception, either such as they are witnessed in nature, or broken up, and re-compounded - Connected both with the intellectual and emotive departments of mind - With the intellectual department, either as illustrating, or as supplying hypotheses. Favourable to mental health in the above operations. No corresponding benefit from imagination relatively to the emotive department. Not, even, when our feelings require to be heightened. - This illustrated in the cases of courage. Of benevolence.

THE meaning generally conveyed by the term imagination, is expressed in the following passages of Mr. Dugald Stewart.* "The province of imagination is to select qualities and circumstances from a variety of different objects; and by combining and disposing these to form a new creation of its own." Again, "The nature and province of imagination are most clearly exemplified in the arts which convey pleasure to the mind by new modifications and combinations of beauties originally perceived by the eye." The property, to * Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. i.