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explained away. Now this man's mind is not only reduced to the size of his idea, and assimilated to its character, but it has lost its soundness. His reason is disordered.

6. His judgment is perverted-depraved. He sees things in unjust and illegitimate relations. The subject that absorbs him has grown out of proper proportions, and all other subjects have shrunk away from it. I know another man-a man of fine powers-who is just as much absorbed by the subject of ventila tion; and though both of these men are regarded by the community as of sound mind, I think they are demonstrably insane.

7. If we rise into larger fields, we shall find more notable demonstration of the starving effect of the entertainment of a single idea. Scattered throughout the country we shall find men who have devoted themselves to the cause of temperance, or abstinence from intoxicating liquors. Here is a grand, a humane, a most worthy and important cause; yet temperance as an idea is not enough to furnish food for a human soul. Some of these men have only room in them for one idea, and, so far as they are concerned, it might as well be temperance as anything, though it is bad for the cause; but the majority of them were, at starting, men of generous instincts, a quick sense of that which is pure and true, and a genuine love of mankind.

8. They dwelt upon their idea-they lived upon it for a few years and then they "showed their keeping." If I should wish to find a narrow-minded, uncharitable, bigoted soul, in the smallest possible space of time, I would look among those who have made temperance the specialty of their lives-not because temperance is bad, but because one idea is bad; and the men afflicted by this particular idea are numerous and notorious.

9. They have no faith in any man who does not believe exactly as they do. They accuse every man of unworthy motives who opposes them. They permit no liberty of individual judg nent and no range of opinion; and when they get a chance, they drive legislation into the most absurd and harmful extremes Men of one idea are always extremists, and extremists are always nuisances. I might truthfully add that an extremist is never a man of sound mind.

10. The whole tribe of professional agitators and mis-called

reformers are men of one idea. That these men do good, sometimes directly and frequently indirectly, I do not deny; and it is equally evident that they do a great deal of harm, the worst of which, perhaps, falls upon themselves. Like the charge of a cannon, they do damage to an enemy's fortifications, but they burn up the powder there is in them, and lose the ball. Like blind old Samson, they may prostrate the pillars of a great wrong, but they crush themselves and the Philistines together The greatest and truest reformer that ever lived was Jesus Christ; but ah! the difference between his broad aims, universal sympathies, and overflowing love, and the malignant spirit that moves those who angrily beat themselves to death against an instituted wrong

!

11. If a man undertake to live upon a single idea, it really makes very little difference to him whether that idea be a good or a bad one. A man may as well get scurvy on beans as beef. I suppose a diet of potatoes would be quite as likely to support life comfortably as a diet of peaches. It is because the human soul cannot live upon one thing alone, but demands participation in every expression of the life of God, that it will dwarf and starve upon even the grandest and most divine idea.

12. This selection of a single idea from the great world of ideas to which the mind is vitally related, and making it food. and drink, and motive and pivotal point of action, and supreme object of devotion, is mental and moral suicide. It makes that a despotic king which should be a tributary subject. It enslaves the soul to a base partisanship. It is right to make money, and it is right to be rich when wealth is won legitimately; but when money becomes the supreme object of a man's life, the soul starves as rapidly as the coffers are filled. It is right to be a temperance man and an anti-slavery man, and an advocate of any special Christian reform; but the effect of adopting any one of these reforms as the supreme object of a man's pursuit, never fails to belittle him.

13. One of the most pitiable objects the world contains is a man of generous natural impulses grown sour, impatient, bitter, abusive, uncharitable, and ungracious, by devotion to one idea, and the failure to impress it upon the world with the strength

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by which it possesses himself. Many of these fondly hug the delusion to themselves that they are martyrs, when, in fact, they are only suicides. Many of these look forward to the day when posterity will canonize them, and lift them to the glory of those who were not received by their age because they were in advance of their age. So they regard with contempt the pigmy world, wrap the mantles of their mortified pride about them, and lie own in a delusive dream of immortality.

14. Whether the effect of devotion to a single idea be disas rous or otherwise to the devotees, nothing in all history is better proved-nothing in all philosophy is more clearly demonstrable-than the fact that it is a damage to the idea. If I wished to disgust a community with any special idea, I would set a man talking about it and advocating it, who would talk of nothing else. If I wished to ruin a cause utterly, I would submit it to the advocacy of one who would thrust it into every man's face, who would make every other cause subordinate to it, who would refuse to see any objections to it, who would accuse all opponents of unworthy motives, and who would thus exhibit his absolute slavery to it. Men have an instinct which tells them that such people as these are not trustworthy-that their sentiments and opinions are as valueless as those of children.

15. We have only to learn that a man can see nothing but his pet idea, and is really in its possession, to lose all confidence. in his judgment. When in a court of justice a man testifies upon a point that touches his personal interests or feelings or relations, we say that his testimony is not valuable-not reliable. It decides nothing for us. We say that the evidence does not come from the proper source. We do not expect candor from him, for we perceive that his interests are too deeply involved to allow sound judgment and utterly truthful expression. It is recisely thus with all professional agitators and reformers-all evotees of single ideas. They are personally so intimately con. ected with their idea-have been so enslaved by their ideaare so interested in its prosperity-that they are not competent to testify with relation to it.

EXERCISE XXXVIII.

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER, distinguished as the author of some admirable Bongs and other writings, was born in the year 1790. He is better known under the assumed name of BARRY CORNWALL, which is merely an anagram formed by transposing the letters of his real name.

IMAGINATION.

PROCTER.

1. Imagination differs from Fancy, inasmuch as it does by a single effort what the latter effects by deliberate comparison. Generally speaking, imagination deals with the passions and the higher moods of the mind. It is the fiercer and more potent spirit; and the images are flung out of its burning grasp, as it were molten, and massed together. It is a complex power, including those faculties which are called by metaphysicians, Conception, Abstraction, and Judgment. It is the genius of personification. It concentrates the many into the one, coloring and investing its own complex creation with the attributes of all. It multiplies and divides and remodels, always changing, in one respect or other, the literal fact, and always enriching it, when properly exerted.

2. It merges ordinary nature and literal truth in the brilliant atmosphere which it exhales, till they come forth like the illuminations of sunset, which were nothing but clouds before. It acts upon all things drawn within its range; sometimes in the creation of character, and sometimes in figures of speech only. It is different in different people; in Shakspeare, bright and rapid as lightning, fusing things by its power; in Milton, awful as collected thunder. It peoples the elements with fantastic forms, and fills the earth with unearthly heroism, intellect, and beauty.

3. It is the parent of all those passionate creations which Shakspeare has bequeathed to us. It is the origin of that terrible generation of Milton,-SIN, and the shadowy DEATH, RUMOR, and DISCORD with its thousand tongues, NIGHT and CHAOS; ancestors of Nature; down to all those who lie

"Under the boiling ocean, wrapped in chains"—

of all phantasies born beneath the moon, and all the miracles of dreams. It is an intense and burning power, and comes

"Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage❞—

(which line is itself a magnificent instance of imagination)-and is, indeed, a concentration of the intellect, gathering together its wandering faculties, and bursting forth in a flood of thought, till the apprehension is staggered which pursues it.

4. The exertion of this faculty is apparent in every page of our two great poets; from

"The shout that tore Hell's concave,"

to the "care" that "sate on the faded cheek" of Satan; from the wounds of Thammuz* which allured

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from the curses of Lear upon his daughters, which

to Hamlet,

"Stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,"

"Benetted round with villainies,"

and thousands of others which meet us at every opening of the leaves.

*Thammuz, or Tammuz, was a Syrian deity for whom the Hebrew Idolatresses were accustomed to hold an annual lamentation. Sec Ezek. viii. 14.

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