Opposition

The imagination finds an opposition in its internal qualities and principles in running from low to high.

The soul seeks opposition when elevated with joy and courage.

It eagerly throws itself into any scene of thought or action where its courage meets matter to nourish and employ it.

It follows that everything which invigorates and enlivens the soul, whether by touching the passions or imagination, naturally:

• conveys to the fancy this inclination for ascent
• determines it to run against the natural stream of its thoughts and conceptions.

This aspiring progress of the imagination suits the mind’s present disposition.

This difficulty sustains and increases its vigour, instead of extinguishing it.

This is why virtue, genius, power, and riches are associated with height and sublimity, as poverty, slavery, and folly are conjoined with descent and lowness.

Milton represents descent to be adverse with the angels.

• Angels cannot sink without labour and compulsion.

If we were like his angels, this order of things would be entirely inverted.

The very nature of ascent and descent is derived from the difficulty and propensity.

Consequently, every one of their effects proceeds from that origin.

All this is easily applied to why a considerable distance in time produces a greater veneration for the distant objects than a like removal in space.

The imagination moves with more difficulty in passing from one portion of time to another, than in a transition through the parts of space.

Because space or extension appears united to our senses, while time or succession is always broken and divided.

This difficulty interrupts and weakens the fancy, when joined with a small distance.

But it has a contrary effect in a great removal.

The mind, elevated by the vastness of its object, is still further elevated by the difficulty of the conception.

It is obliged every moment to renew its efforts in the transition from one part of time to another.

It feels a more vigorous and sublime disposition than in a transition through the parts of space, where the ideas flow with easiness and facility.

In this disposition, the imagination, passing from the consideration of the distance to the view of the distant objects, gives us a proportional veneration for it.

This is why all the relics of antiquity:

• are so precious in our eyes
• appear more valuable than what is brought even from the remotest parts of the world.

The third phenomenon I have remarked will be a full confirmation of this.

Not every removal in time produces veneration and esteem.

We are not apt to imagine our posterity will excel us, or equal our ancestors.

This phenomenon is the more remarkable, because any distance in futurity does not weaken our ideas so much as an equal removal in the past.

Though a removal in the past, when very great, increases our passions beyond a like removal in the future.

Yet a small removal has a greater influence in reducing them.

Effort of the Imagination

In our common way of thinking we are placed in a middle station between the past and future.

Our imagination finds a difficulty in running along the past, and a facility in following the future, the difficulty conveys the notion of ascent, and the facility of descent.

Hence we imagine our ancestors to be mounted above us, and our posterity to lie below us.

Our fancy arrives at the past with effort, but easily reaches the future. This effort:

• weakens the conception if the distance is small.
• enlarges and elevates the imagination, when attended with a suitable object.

On the other hand, the facility assists the fancy in a small removal.

• But it takes off from its force when it contemplates any considerable distance.

I will summarize this subject of the will to set it more distinctly before the reader’s eyes.

A passion is a violent and sensible emotion of mind, when presented with:

• any good or evil is presented, or
• any object which excites an appetite.

The affections mean the same with the passions. But affections:

• operate more calmly
• cause no disorder in the temper.

Tranquillity leads us to a mistake concerning them.

It causes us to regard them as conclusions only of our intellectual faculties.

The causes and effects of these violent and calm passions are pretty variable.

They depend on every individual’s peculiar temper and disposition.

The violent passions generally have a more powerful influence on the will.

The calm passions are able to control the violent ones in their most furious movements, when:

• corroborated by reflection
• seconded by resolution.

A calm passion may easily be changed into a violent one by:

• a change of temper or the object’s circumstances and situation.
• the borrowing of force from any attendant passion
• custom, or
• exciting the imagination.
  • This makes this whole affair more uncertain.

On the whole, this struggle of passion and of reason:

• diversifies human life
• makes men so different from each other and from themselves in different times.

Philosophy can only account for a few of the greater and more sensible events of this war.

It must leave all the smaller and more delicate revolutions, as dependent on principles too fine and minute for her comprehension.