Illus. The following are happy instances of the effects of such wellchosen analogies, though the writings in which they occur are not professedly didactic

Example 1. To endeavor to work upon the vulgar with fine sense, is like attempting to cut blocks of marble with a razor.POPE.

2. Did you ever observe one of your clerks cutting his paper with a blunt knife? Did you ever know the knife to go the wrong way ? Whereas, if you had used a razor or a penknife, you had odds against you of spoiling the whole sheet.-SWIFT.

The dean very happily employs this allusion to illustrate the diversity between genius and ordinary useful abilities.

216. The pleasure we receive from analogy arises very much from the illustration which it affords of the author's ideas.

Illus. Thus, Cicero, and after him Locke, in illustrating the difficulty of attending to the subjects of our consciousness, have compared the mind to the eye, which sees every object around it, but is invisible to itself. To have compared the eye, in this respect, to the mind, would have been absurd.

Again, Pope's comparison of the progress of youthful curiosity, in the pursuits of science, to that of a traveller among the Alps, owes all its beauty to this-the Alps furnish only the illustration of the allusion, not the original subject.

217. Allusions from material objects, both to the intellectual and the moral worlds, are found chiefly in compositions written under the influence of some particular passion, or which are meant to express some peculiarity in the mind of the author.

Illus. Thus, a melancholy man, who has met with many misfortunes in life, will be apt to moralize on every physical event, and every appearance of nature; because his attention dwells more habitually on human life and conduct than on the material objects around him.

Example. This is the case with the banished duke, in Shakspeare's "As you like it," who, in the language of the poet,

"Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

But this is plainly a distempered state of mind; and the allusions please, not so much from the analogies they present, as by the picture they give of the character of the person to whom they have occurred.

218. An analogy of the most remote kind, consisting merely in the general effect produced upon the mind, is expressed in the following beautiful similitude of Ossian.

Example. The music of Carryl was like the memory of joys that are past: pleasant and mournful to the soul.

219. (III.) CONTRARIETY, or CONTRAST, is also a common source of combination among our ideas.

Illus. 1. Thus, the darkness of night induces us to think of the splendor of day; and winter's cold turns our thoughts to the heat of summer.

2. It was contrariety that associated in the mind of Xerxes the melancholy idea of mortality and dissolution, with the prospect of his millions in the pride of activity and military splendor, when he lamented that, in a short period of time, not one of them would be found upon the earth.

220. The associating principle of contrast is calculated to suggest the finest poetical transitions.

Illus. 1. Thus, in Goldsmith's Traveller, the transitions are managed with consummate skill; and yet how different from that logical method which would be suited to a philosophical discourse on the state of society in the different parts of Europe! Thus, after describing the effeminate and debased Romans, the poet proceeds to the Swiss :

My soul, turn from them-turn we to survey
Where rougher climes a nobler race display.

And, after painting some defects in the manners of this gallant but unrefined people, his thoughts are led to those of the French:

To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,

I turn—and France displays her bright domain.

2. The transition which occurs in the following lines, seems to be suggested by the accidental mention of a word; and is certainly one of the happiest in our language :

Heavens! how unlike their Belgic sires of old!
Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold!
War in each breast, and freedom on each brow,
How much unlike the sons of Britain now!-

-Fired at the sound, my genius spreads her wing,
And flies where Britain courts the western spring.

221. This bias of the mind for contrast, in its association of ideas, is likewise eminently conducive to the advancement of our knowledge; for it leads us to inquire in what respects the various objects of nature differ from one another, as well as wherein they agree; and thus stimulates us to acquire an accurate knowledge of their properties.

Note. The student may refer back to the illustrations of Articles 164, 166, and 168, which, though illustrative of general conceptions, stimulate us to acquire an accurate knowledge of the properties or attributes of nature that differ from one another, or agree in general and characteristic particulars.

222. The relation of contrariety enters pretty largely into the allusions of wit, in conjunction with those of resemblance

or analogy; for this obvious reason, that the combinations of wit must not be readily discoverable; in other words, they must partake both of resemblance, or analogy, and of contrariety.

Illus. That species of wit which constitutes the ludicrous, exhibits a due share of this mixture of resemblance and contrast; for, according to the most legitimate analysis of the ludicrous, it consists in a mixture of relation and contrariety; or of incongruity in the parts of an object, or assemblage of related objects. (İllus. Art. 207.)

Example. In the following spirited similitude of Pope, the parent of the celestials is contrasted by the daughter of night and chaos; heaven by Grub-street; gods by dunces; and, besides, the parody which it contains on a beautiful passage of Virgil, adds particular lustre to this aggrandizement of little things, or mock majestic.

As Berecynthia, while her offspring vie
In homage to the mother of the sky,
Surveys around her, in the blest abode,
An hundred sons, and every son a god,*
Not with less glory mighty Dulness crowned

Shall take through Grub-street her triumphant round,
And, her Parnassus glancing o'er at once,

Behold an hundred sons, and each a dunce.

223. (IV.) MUTUAL DEPENDENCE is the fourth natural source of connection among the objects of our thoughts which we enumerated. If we find one occurrence or phenomenon constantly succeeded by another, it is extremely natural that the one should be suggested by the other to our minds. On the same principle, the notion of means employed, suggests the end which they are designed to accomplish.

Illus. 1. Thus, when we observe the labors of the husbandman, we naturally think of the harvest that is to ensue; and the study of an argument, or a piece of reasoning, leads to the consideration of the conclusion or conviction which it tends to produce.

2. To this source of combination we, in a great measure, owe our desire to discover the hidden causes of the phenomena of nature, or the established dependence which these have upon one another. The philosopher accomplishes this by long and patient study of nature herself; but the illiterate are sufficiently ready to assign causes for whatever they see, though experience tells them

*The passage

in Virgil is this:

Felix prole virum, qualis Berecynthia mater
Invehitur curru Phrygias turritu per urbes,
Læta deûm partu, centum complexa nepotes,
Omnes cœlicolas, omnes supera alta tenentes.

ENEIDOS.

that their want of knowledge is a copious source of error in this field of speculation. And to this ignorance of the real dependence of events upon each other, and a proneness to admit a connection where none really exists, must we ascribe the many superstitious observances which prevail among the vulgar, and still more among savage

nations.

II. Accidental Relations, or Sources of Association.

224. We not only connect the objects of our thoughts together according to those essential and natural relations which we observe among them, but also in consequence of the mere accidental circumstances of their having been presented to the mind together. (Art. 204.)

Illus. "We agreed," says Cicero, in the introduction to the fifth book de finibus, "that we should take our afternoon's walk in the academy, as, at that time of the day, it was a place where there was no sort of company. Accordingly, at the hour appointed, we went to Piso's. We passed the time in conversing on different matters during our short walk from the double gate, till we came to the academy, that justly celebrated spot; which, as we wished, we found in perfect solitude. I know not, said Piso, whether it be a natural feeling, or an illusion of the imagination founded on habit, that we are more powerfully affected by the sight of those places which have been much frequented by illustrious men, than when we either listen to the recital, or read the detail, of their great actions. At this moment I feel that emotion which I speak of. I see before me the perfect form of Plato, who was wont to dispute in this very place; these gardens not only recall him to my memory, but present his very person to my senses. fancy to myself that here stood Speusippus; there Xenocrates, and here, on this bench, sat his disciple Polemo. To me, our ancient senatehouse seems peopled with the like visionary forms; for, often, when I enter it, the shades of Scipio, of Cato, and of Lælius, and, in particular, of my venerable grandfather, rise to my imagination. In short, such is the effect of local situation in recalling associated ideas to the mind, that it is not without reason, some philosophers have founded on this principle a species of artificial memory."

Obs. The student will please to observe, that the foregoing illustration shows clearly the difference, also, between the effect of a perception and an idea, in awakening associated thoughts and feelings.

225. This law of association is manifestly of the greatest utility in promoting the exercise of memory; and, indeed, spontaneous or involuntary memory seems entirely to depend on those associations which the mind has previously formed, whether according to natural or accidental relations.

Illus. After time has in some degree reconciled us to the death of a friend, how wonderfully are we affected the first time we enter the house where he lived!-Every thing we see; the apartment where

I

he studied; the chair upon which he sat, recall to us the happiness which we have enjoyed together; and we should feel a sort of violation of that respect we owe to his memory, to engage in any light or indifferent discourse when such objects are before us. "That man, says Dr. Johnson, " is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force on the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."

226. On account of their unlimited range, the accidental or merely arbitrary combinations are extensively useful to the memory; and what is called mechanical artificial memory is founded entirely upon these combinations. (See Пllus. Art. 224.)

Illus. It is, in general, a merely arbitrary relation that subsists between the sign and the thing signified; as between the letters of the alphabet and the sounds of which they are expressive; as well as between these sounds, or the various words of a language, and the thoughts which they are intended to denote. Thus, the whole fabric of language, whether oral or written, rests upon that law of the human constitution, whereby things, which are repeatedly presented to the mind together, are afterwards suggested, the one by the other. The same may be said of the symbols of the algebraist; the notes of the musician; and various other like signs.

227. Associations, which are merely arbitrary, appear to operate upon the mind with fully as much power as those which are founded in nature.

Illus. The well-known effect of the national air, called "RANS DES VACHES," upon the Swiss regiments in foreign lands, in exciting what is emphatically called the maladie du pays, furnishes a very striking illustration of the peculiar power of a perception, or of an impression on the senses, to awaken associated thoughts and feelings. And I cannot here omit to mention an anecdote of my late venerable and worthy friend Adam Callendar, who in his younger days had served as an officer in India. A Highland regiment had been ordered up the country, and on the parade, the bag-piper played the famous air of "Lochaber no more.' The effect was not anticipated even by the piper. The sensibilities of his companions were awakened, and the very men who could rush upon death in all the forms of battle, refused to go, as they thought, further from home; and the governor-general had too much good sense to call this maladie du pays by the ungracious name of mutiny. In the Peninsula, during the late war, the piper of a Highland regiment was struck in the leg with a bullet, and could not stand; yet, regardless of his wound, did he seat himself on his knapsack, and cheer his comrades to the charge with the martial tune of "Up and War them a' Willie." It would be an insult to this brave man's virtues to inquire, whether he had associated the idea of victory with his "spirit-stirring lay." (See Illus. Art. 142.)

228. The consequences of these arbitrary associations are sometimes exceedingly whimsical; of which Locke records two remarkable instances.