the universe tide after tide and wave after wave of un speakable, inconceivable, ecstacy and joy.

The future opens wide fields for the rational exercise of imagination, and spreads out stores of enjoyment, boundless as the soul's desires and aspirations. Into that field it is our duty to enter; over every acre of it we ought to roam; and into the unfathomable depths of its circumambent oceans, we ought to plunge, and their broad surfaces to explore, till our pent-up spirits acquire an enlargement of comprehension corresponding to the magnitude of their destinies and desires; and to the boundless purposes of infinite love which have called them into being, and adapted the illimitable universe to their transcendent powers.

§ 230. To be exercised to advantage, however, in any department of the vast field of ideas, imagination must be retained in due subordination to reason, and like reason, her aim and end must be the representation and apprehension of the true and the good. The end of all things is good; the goodness of all things is their subserviency to that good, which is their end and purpose. This end it is the province of a well developed and well regulated imagination to subserve, on the largest scale and to the greatest extent. But if perverted by ignorance, or by depraved appetites and affections, or governed by arbitrary principles, this noble faculty which is given us for the best purposes becomes an instrument of infinite evil.

§ 231. Great and noble characters have generally been distinguished for powerful and well developed imaginations. This is especially the case with regard to the examples of moral greatness. David, the illustrious type of Christ, the shepherd poet, and subsequently the royal poet, whose immortal songs have touched the heart of the human race, and breathed into it the deepest inspirations of powerful feeling and ennobling sentiment, is a remarkable example of the ennobling and exalting influence of a powerful and well directed imagination. His odes are poems of the imagination and of the heart. They proceed from his heart, penetrated and moved by the objects of his own clear and powerful conceptions, and by means of those conceptions reach effectually the hearts of others.

Imagination has in all ages been the handmaid of philosophy and religion, and has been developed to an unusual degree in the authors of great philosophical and religious

movements. Peter the Hermit, who called out the millions of Europe to a series of Crusades for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre and the protection of pious pilgrims against infidel insult and injury; Ignatius Loyola the founder of the order of Jesuits; Martin Luther the great asserter of the essential rights of private judgment in religious matters, and the apostle of liberty and improvement in modern times; Columbus the great discoverer of America, who displayed in the accomplishment of that discovery the greatest energy and force of character, and the greatest clearness and comprehensiveness of conception, were no less distinguished for their powers of imagination, than for their great achieve

ments.

§ 232. The proper cultivation and direction of the imagination is an object of great and general importance; and ought to be prosecuted simultaneously with that of reason; and at the same time that we endeavor to bring forward our children to be in the highest possible degree rational beings, we ought also to bring them forward to be in the highest possible degree the subjects of a well-regulated and well-directed imagination. The proper method of accomplishing this, is to furnish children with exercises for their imaginations as well as for their reason and memories. Psalms and hymns, and songs of sentiment and affection, may serve as lessons for this purpose; and after some little progress has been made, the student may be directed to the study of more extended works of imagination, both in poetry and prose,

The study of works of imagination ought to be embraced in every system of liberal and general education. It ought not to be pursued to the exclusion of other studies, or to the neglect of them; but it ought to accompany them as an essential branch of the great family of useful sciences, and an indispensable means of perfecting the development of the mental faculties, both of ideas and of the affections. The mind whose imagination is not developed, has its faculty of useful ideas but half improved, and the deep fountains of its affections undiscovered and unreached. The study of the most perfect works of the imagination has the same relation to the development of imagination, which that of the most perfect works of judgment, have to the development of reason. Both are useful, and in most cases necessary. But they are not always indispensable. The mind may

exercise its powers, and attain their development to an extraordinary degree, with little aid from these sources; but instances of this are extremely rare; and as a general rule, the works of the great masters of any art and of all departments of thinking, are the indispensable means of great progress by others, in the attainment of those arts and in the acquisition of corresponding powers.

CHAPTER XVII.

NATURE AND PURPOSES OF REASONING.

§ 233. Reason is an exercise of the faculty of ideas directed to the discovery and communication of truth. It constitutes a large part of the business of life, and is the indispensable condition of the attainment of knowledge, virtue, and happiness. All men are reasoners from their earliest infancy to their latest age; and all branches of business, all the arts of civilized life, and all professions and employments, make continual demands for the prosecution of this exercise. Like other employments, reasoning is an art, which has its general and particular principles and rules, and which admits of different degrees of skill in their application to practical purposes.

This art is learned to some extent by all men, and practiced by all; but there is great inequality among men in their knowledge of it, and in their habitual modes of redu Icing it to practice. The simplest act of reasoning is that by which we infer one truth from another; as the existence of a subject that thinks, from thought; or that of an object that resists, from resistance. From single ideas we infer the existence of objects sustaining certain relations to the objects of those ideas; as in the cases above; in which from thought, we infer a subject that thinks; and from resistance, an object that resists. From two ideas entertained simultaneously, we are capable of drawing important inferences which cannot be drawn from one. A large proportion of our reasonings involve inferences from a duality of ideas, that is, from ideas associated in ranks of two and two. The contemplation of objects in associations of two

and two, is the foundation of our ideas of them as similar and diverse, and leads to ideas of the points, both of similarity and diversity. The points of similarity become grounds of aggregation into the same classes; those of diversity, grounds of separation into different classes. We discover men, compare them two and two, and on the ground of their points of agreement, in form, size, and character, denominate them men. We compare them again, with a view to discover their diversities, and refer them to as many classes as we find points of diversity in which any two agree. On this principle we divide them into men and women; men and children; wise men and foolish; learned men and ignorant; good men and bad; and so on. A knowledge of men involves a perception of their similarities and diversities of character, and is expressed by referring them to their generic divisions and sub-divisions. To know a particular man, is to know in what class of men to place him, and to be able to specify his various generic peculiarities.

§234. Reasoning is of several kinds, and has been the subject of much discussion both in ancient and modern times. The most important kinds of reasoning are, the Analytical and Synthetical, corresponding to analytical and synthetical judgments. These kinds of reasoning differ essentially from each other, both in their objects and methods. The object of analytical reasoning is the communication and establishment of truth; that of synthetical reasoning, is its discovery. Where the method of discovery is made use of for the purpose of communication, it is generally called the inductive method. The inductive method is another name for the synthetical, and is applied to it in allusion to the manner of drawing conclusions from an aggregate of particular facts. In analytical reasonings, we infer less general conclusions from more general ones; and reason from the greater, to the less; from the higher, to the lower; and from wholes, to parts. In synthetical reasoning we infer one object from another, or from several others; and form general ideas from particular ones; or more general ideas from less general ones. Each mode of reasoning has its principles and rules; and men may excel in one of them, at the same time that they are indifferent reasoners in the other.

exercise it, both in its solitary and social hours, and on all subjects, from the gay and sportive, to the most magnificent and sublime. Just in proportion as civilization and refinement have advanced, have the operations of the imagination been extended and improved. The dim outlines of reason in the natural world, are but the starting points of the imagination. Where they stop, imagination starts; and the sublimest elevations in which they terminate, are but the foundation of her beautiful and boundless structures.

§ 220. Imagination is not in her decline, as some suppose. She has no affinities for ignorance and superstition, and is no child of weakness, but is the first-born child of knowledge and truth. In the twilight of the mind, she shines forth illustrious and brilliant; like a beautiful gem in the diadem of night; but as the morning breaks, and light from the sun of reason increases, she also increases the brilliancy and power of her rays, till she lights up a brighter morning, and makes the day trebly glorious. The imagination of the ancients was developed proportionably to their reason; and their immortal works correspond to that development. The imagination of men in modern times is developed proportionably to modern reason, and its creations are of a corresponding order. The great works of imagination in modern times are the works of men disciplined by all the methods of science and philosophy. Paradise Lost, the living fires of passion and the breathing spirit of sentiment and affection in Shakspeare, and the unrivalled majesty and might of Byron, as he swept all the chords of feeling and plunged into the heart's deepest recesses, borne himself and bearing others on ocean tides of soul-stirring melody, have no parallels in ancient literature, and are a standing and unanswerable refutation of the calumny that the progress of reason is the decline of the imagination.

Imagination bears the same relation to Painting and Statuary which it does to Poetry and Romance; and is the handmaid of Reason in all the improvements of civilized life.

Relation of Imagination to the Affections.

§ 221. Imagination is the special servant of the affections, and acts a conspicuous part in their development. We love and hate, are attracted and repelled, to some extent, by the careful and guarded deductions of reason; but the great tide