Perhaps, if we speak with
rigorous exactness, no human mind is in its right state[a]. There is no
man, whose imagination does not, sometimes, predominate over his reason,
who can regulate his attention wholly by his will, and whose ideas will
come and go at his command. No man will be found, in whose mind airy
notions do not, sometimes, tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear
beyond the limits of sober probability. All power of fancy over reason,
is a degree of insanity; but, while this power is such as we can control
and repress, it is not visible to others, nor considered as any
deprivation of the mental faculties: it is not pronounced madness, but
when it becomes ungovernable, and apparently influences speech or
action.
"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. When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour of
excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of inquiry will,
sometimes, give way to idleness or satiety. 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.
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