SECT. XVI.

IMITATION.

THE fecond paffion belonging to fociety is imitation, or, if you will, a defire of imitating, and confequently a pleasure in it. This paffion arifes from much the fame caufe with fympathy. For as fympathy makes us take a concern in whatever men feel, fo this affection prompts us to copy whatever they do; and confequently we have a pleasure in imitating, and in whatever belongs to imitation merely as it is fuch, without any intervention of the reasoning faculty; but folely from our natural conftitution, which Providence has framed in fuch a manner as to find either pleasure or delight, according to the nature of the object, in whatever regards the purposes of our being, It is by imitation far more than by precept, that we learn every thing; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleafantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the ftrongest links of fociety; it is a fpecies of mutual compliance, which all men yield to each other, without constraint to themselves, and which is extremely flattering to all. Herein it is that painting and many other agreeable arts have laid one of the principal foundations of their power. And fince, by its influence on

our manners and our paffions, it is of fuch great confequence, I fhall here venture to lay down a rule, which may inform us with a good degree of certainty when we are to attribute the power of the arts to imitation, or to our pleasure in the skill of the imitator merely, and when to fympathy, or fome' other cause in conjunction with it. When the object represented in poetry or painting is fuch as we could have no defire of feeing in the reality, then I may be fure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the power of imitation, and to no caufe operating in the thing itself. So it is with most of the pieces which the painters call ftilllife. In thefe a cottage, a dunghill, the meaneft and most ordinary utenfils of the kitchen, are capable of giving us pleasure. But when the object of the painting or poem is fuch as we should run to fee if real, let it affect us with what odd fort of fense it will, we may rely upon it, that the power of the poem or picture is more owing to the na ture of the thing itself than to the mere effect of imitation, or to a confideration of the skill of the imitator, however excellent. Ariftotle has spoken fo much and fo folidly upon the force of imitation in his Poeticks, that it makes any further difcourfe upon this fubject the lefs neceffary.

SECT.

SECT. XVII,

AMBITION.

ALTHOUGH imitation is one of the great instruments used by Providence in bringing our nature towards its perfection, yet if men gave themfelves up to imitation entirely, and each followed the other, and fo on in an eternal circle, it is easy to see that there never could be any improvement amongst them. Men muft remain as brutes do, the fame at the end that they are at this day, and that they were in the beginning of the world. To prevent this, God has planted in man a fenfe of ambition, and a fatisfaction arifing from the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in fomething deemed valuable amongst them. It is this paffion that drives men to all the ways we fee in ufe of fignalizing themselves, and that tends to make whatever excites in a man the idea of this diftinction fo very pleasant. It has been fo ftrong as to make very miferable men take comfort, that they were fupreme in mifery; and certain it is, that where we cannot distinguish ourselves by fomething excellent, we begin to take a complacency in fome fingular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other. It is on this principle that flattery is fo prevalent; for flattery is no more than what raises in a man's mind an idea of a preference which he

has not. Now, whatever, either on good or upon bad grounds, tends to raise a man in his own opinion, produces a fort of fwelling and triumph, that is extremely grateful to the human mind; and this fwelling is never more perceived, nor operates with more force, than when without danger we are converfant with terrible objects, the mind always claiming to itself fome part of the dignity and importance of the things which it contemplates. Hence proceeds what Longinus has obferved of that glorying and sense of inward greatness, that always fills the reader of fuch paffages in poets and orators as are fublime; it is what every man muft have felt in himfelf upon fuch occafions.

SECT. XVIII.

THE RECAPITULATION.

TO draw the whole of what has been faid into a few diftinct points :-The paffions which belong to felf-prefervation, turn on pain and danger; they are fimply painful when their caufes immediately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in fuch circumftances; this delight I have not called pleasure, because it turns on pain, and because it is different enough from any idea of pofitive pleasure. Whatever excites this delight, I call ・Sublime

fublime. The paffions belonging to felf-prefervation are the strongest of all the paffions.

The fecond head to which the paffions are referred with relation to their final cause, is fociety. There are two forts of focieties. The firft is, the fociety of fex. The paffion belonging to this is called love, and it contains a mixture of luft; its object is the beauty of women. The other is the great fociety with man and all other animals. The paffion fubfervient to this is called likewife love, but it has no mixture of luft, and its object is beauty; which is a name I shall apply to all fuch qualities in things as induce in us a fenfe of affec tion and tenderness, or fome other paffion the most nearly refembling thefe. The paffion of love has its rife in pofitive pleasure; it is, like all things which grow out of pleasure, capable of being mixed with a mode of uneafinefs, that is, when an idea of its object is excited in the mind with an idea at the fame time of having irretrievably loft it. This mixed fenfe of pleasure I have not called pain, be, cause it turns upon actual pleasure, and because it is, both in its cause and in most of its effects, of a nature altogether different.

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Next to the general paffion we have for fociety, to a choice in which we are directed by the pleafure we have in the object, the particular paffion under this head called fympathy has the greateft extent. The nature of this paffion is, to put us in