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 combinations, 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 favorite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degress the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time 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 reason 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, connections, and tendencies; and to distinguish

• Johnson's Rasselas.

Johnson's description. Definition of reason? How many general applications ?

the connections 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. 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 chemical properties of a mineral-the symptoms of a disease-sensible properties of color, 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.

First? What comprehended under the phrase relations of things? First class ? Examples? Second class? Distinction between resemblance and analogy Arts depending upon these relations? Process of classification.

3. Nearly connected with the former, but still more extensive, is that important process by which, 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 connection 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 be certainly recognised,-the symptoms by

Third class? Relations of composition? Relations of causation? What included? Relations of degree and proportion? Moral relations? Province of reason, as distinguished from that of attention and memory?

which a disease may be distinguished from other diseases which resemble it, and the actions which a substance may be confidently expected to produce upon other substances in particular circumstances. When the mental process required for doing so is performed in a legitimate manner, the deduction constitutes truth, in regard to the particular point which is the immediate subject of it; when the contrary, it leads to fallacy or falsehood. Hence reason has sometimes been defined that exercise of mind by which we distinguish truth from falsehood.

II. Having by the preceding processes ascertained the uniform tendencies of bodies to be followed by certain actions upon each other, we bring these tendencies into operation for the production of certain results. Hence reason has been considered also to be that power by which we combine means for accomplishing an end; but this, perhaps, may be regarded rather as the practical application of the knowledge to which reason leads us, than as a primary part of the province of reason itself.

III. We compare mental impressions with external things, so as to correct the impressions of the mind in regard to the external world. Mental processes of the most important kind are connected with this application of reason.

Reason or judgment, when duly exercised, conducts us through these various mental operations, and guides us towards the discovery of truth. It does so by enabling us to compare facts with facts, and events with events; to weigh their relations, bearings, and tendencies; and to assign to each circumstance its proper weight and influence in the conclusions which we are to deduce from them. The person who does so we call a man of sound judgment, whose opinions and conclusions we receive with confidence. On the contrary, we receive with distrust and suspicion the conclusions of a man of an opposite character, who forms his opinions and deductions hastily, that is, from a limited number of facts, or a hasty and imperfect examination of their relations.

Truth and falsehood? Second general application of reason? Third general appliGeneral view of reason?

cation?

A distinction has sometimes been made between the term reason, as used in the language of science, and as employed in the common affairs of life; but there seems to be no real ground for the distinction.

Reason, in the language of intellectual science, appears to be that process by which we judge correctly of the true and uniform relations of facts, or events, and give to each circumstance its due influence in the deductions. It is chiefly opposed to imagination, in which the mind is allowed to ramble through chains of events which are connected by loose and casual associations, leading to no true results. It is also distinguished from simple memory, in which facts or events are connected in the mind by certain principles of association, without a full view of their relations. Thus, when we find a person remembering an ex-. tensive collection of facts, and forming certain combinations among them, or deductions from them, without attending to points of difference which tend to other deductions, we say, his memory is better than his judgment.

Reasoning, again, appears to be the continued exercise of reason, when applied to the investigation of a particular subject, or a certain series of facts or events, so as to trace their relations or to establish a particular conclusion as deduced from such a series. This process, however, which is commonly called the discursive faculty, is to be distinguished from the simple exercise of reason. It ought to be guided by reason; that is, by a full view of the real relations of the facts about which it is exercised; but it is often allowed to fix on a slight and partial view of them; or is applied ingeniously to discover relations of a particular kind only. Thus, we speak of a man who reasons closely, or with a correct attention to the real relations of things, and the true weight of every fact in the investigation; of another who reasons loosely, or who is led away by casual relations and partial views, affording no true deductions; and of a third, who reasons ingeniously and plausibly, but not soundly, that is, who argues on one side of a question, and contemplates facts in particular relations only, or as

Distinction commonly made? Ground for it? Reason as opposed to imagination? To memory? Reasoning in contradistinction from reason? Kinds of reasoning?