VALUE OF IMAGINATION. 43 as erected, and the schemes which we project for the future, without a probability of their completion, are among its cherished illusions. If it be the mentis gratissimus error of our lives, it is that to which all are most strongly attached. In youth we enjoy the highest of this poetry, or what is the same thing the finer impulses of our nature, the glowing fancies, the ardent emotions, the sweet imaginings of the soul, that every day beeome closer inmates of our bosoms, and are less frequently imparted because the mass of mankind gets less poetical in feeling, as habit leads more and more to downward tendencies and to gross tangible things. Yet to what is the advance of society owing in its track towards a more advanced civilization, but to the imagination, to those dreams of the fancy embodied often times contrary to the bounded reason of the multitude, in useful inventions which have led the world onward out of the track in which the every day line and rule men would have floundered on until the day of judgment. Art and science differ widely. The first belongs most to nature, and deals with her much in her own fashion, in other words more by impulse than by that rule which is the very body and soul of science. To imagination and its castle building, however lightly esteemed in that wild state which may be compared to an unbroken steed "that paweth the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength," that unreined 44 FANCIFUL EMOTIONS. faculty, which the mechanical every-day member of society looks upon, like Festus looked upon Paul, as in a state of semi-madness-to that unreined faculty is owing all human improvement. Without it I can well re man would stand still and soon become no more than a superior species of brute. It is in early life its pleasures are most enjoyed. member "what a reaching out of the soul, an ardent longing of the mind after something above mortality": I oftentimes experienced. Who has not felt in early years emotions not to be described on seeing a glorious sunset when the sky is decked in the richest colours, cloud heaped upon cloud in gorgeous glory— who has not found imagination picture the throne of the deity, or often in the magnificence Purple castles where red turrets frown, Or waving wreaths of snow spread o'er the blue, And ever changing." Who does not aspire in youth to mingle with such a scene, to ramble in fairy vales or climb mountains of ruby and chrysolite? Who at night viewing "the eternal lights that live along the sky," does not in the fervor of his youthful enthusiasm wish to fling himself into the abyss of space that intervenes, in order to reach those unknown orbs and bathe in fountains of living brightness? Such were the * Job. MENTAL TENDENCIES. 45 feelings I had when I sequestered myself from my companions. Even now when the obtuseness of years which the world's collision, and the animated contests into which all classes of persons are led in some pursuit or another, until the soul becomes callous to the better things of the mind-even now memory's sunshine warms the spirit at the faded pictures it presents of the roses, the fruits, and odours, which the entire horizon presents to the view in life's brief morning. What a mystery lurks in the tendency of the mind to such pursuits as are commonly said to belong to genius, sometimes quickened it is true by some accident, which kindles emulation, as in the case of Reynolds, who became an artist through seeing a drawing-book or picture, I forget which, or Themistocles whom the triumphs of Miltiades would not permit to sleep. Fully as often the tendency is a natural process. I do not myself doubt that it is the especial gift of the supreme Being, and as much a part of the regular system so ordered, and attached to mind as differences in strength or flexibility of limb are qualities attached to matter. Such a gift of heaven is what some denominate "inspiration" applied to mental endowments of a peculiar and high class, those mental tendencies or qualifications of a rare order of excellence, being gifts to fill up or extend benefits they are selected 46 WHAT IS THINKING? to confer upon their fellow men to direct them to dispel popular errors, weaken noxious influences, or like Newton, unfold the dependences of worlds and mankind upon their great creator, and thus extend evidences of a first cause of greater strength, than idle tradition, or the light of untutored nature can exhibit while aiding their testimony. Mere accident or adventure cannot compete in life with the results of thinking. The weakest or strongest employment is that of a man entertaining his own thoughts, says old Montaigne, though free mental association in its intensity, is apt to make the body weak, or as Shakespear has it "When the mind's free the body's delicate." But there is a difference between really thinking, and that which is often taken for it. People who merely exercise certain senses, do not think if they proceed no further. Ideas that come and go into and out of the mind, do not constitute thinking— thinking to an end is the point. Some have an air of thoughtfulness and "seem" to think of whom it may be said "he stalks up and down like a peacock a stride and a stand; ruminates, like an hostess that hath no arithmetic, but has brain to set down her reckoning; writes his life with a politic regard, as who should say-there was wit in his head, and 'twould out; and so there is; but it lies THOUGHTS ON THINKING. 47 as coldly in him as a fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking." Without thinking to purpose, or as the world thinks, it were as well not to think at all. The judgment must be exercised, and do literary men ever think as we of the world think-there's the rub? If they do, what is the use of telling us what we know already, if they do not they are not of us, we have no sort of brotherhood with them, and it is only to divert one's mind from business, that we amuse ourselves with what is foreign to us, so we turn occasionally from the weighty and important concerns of our dealing and ledger-keeping to the frivolities and whimsies of books, as to the work now before us. We have little leisure for such unimportant things, for we do not want to know more than we know already-we only want to be diverted. We do not want to be set thinking. The question "what do you mean by the term thinking?" opportunely put, will show that he who thought he knew what thinking was, had rarely or never thought in his life to any purpose. It had never led to the employment of his judgment by the exercise of his reason. He had mistaken the negation of thought in regard to his daily business, for studious or deep thinking, no matter whether it was exchanged in his sensorium for the picture of the Lord Mayor's coach, or a sirloin at the table of one of the City |