AND BODILY STATES UPON THE IMAGINATION. 183 



lanus, and our own visionary Blake, were striking examples of 

 the latter class. In fact, to such a pitch did the imagination of 

 the two latter carry them, that it would be difficult to draw a strict 

 line of separation between the vivid play of their fancy, and an ac- 

 tual degree of insanity. The latter, however, consisting in mental 

 alienation or perversion upon one or more subjects dependant upon 

 actual bodily complaint, or from strong moral impression, the affec- 

 tion having a commencement distinctly traceable to one of these 

 causes ; whilst the most vivid or exalted imagination is as much 

 part of the natural constitution of the mind, as superior strength or 

 agility is of that of the body. The constitutions of the minds of 

 men are as diversified as the temperament of their bodies ; and it is 

 surprising that, as physiologists have frequently founded classifica- 

 tion of one, that metaphysicians have not attempted arrangements 

 of the other. 



Ignorance as to the nature of the thing sought or avoided, leads 

 the imagination generally to invest it with a brighter or darker hue 

 than it really possesses in nature. This pictured the world to the 

 imagination of Rasselas, when captive in the happy valley, as a pa- 

 radise of varied pleasure, in which every man, wandering according 

 to the bent of his own wish or inclination, enjoyed a perfect felicity. 

 The same cause pictures it to the recluse of the convent as a den of 

 misery in which vice stalks fearlessly and at large, uncontrolled by 

 any opposing virtue. A vivid and playful imagination, which 

 heightens the beauty of natural objects, or combines them in pleasing 

 though unreal scenes, is an element of a well-ordered and a well-cul- 

 tivated mind. But when, to the exclusion of the other powers of 

 the mind, she assumes the despot and calls the passions round her 

 dark and splendid throne, obedient to her dictates and her will, no 

 power remains to control or regulate the mental ray, which inflames 

 the whole soul and exalts it into the fervour of enthusiasm, hurries 

 it into the extravagance of superstition, or precipitates it into the 

 frenzy of fanaticism; — these being the highest steps imagination 

 reaches before throwing off, at once, the feeble shackles with 

 which reason still confines her, she gives loose to all her powers, 

 and plunges, at once, into lunacy or mania. 



In the inhabitants of northern climates, in the temperate man, 



