

                    The dangerous prevalence of imagination

»Disorders of intellect, answered Imlac, happen much more often than superficial
observers will easily believe. Perhaps, if we speak with rigorous exactness, no
human mind is in its right state. There is no man whose imagination does not
sometimes predominate over his reason, who can regulate his attention wholly by
his will, and whose ideas will come and go at his command. No man will be found
in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannise, and force him to hope or
fear beyond the limits of sober probability. All power of fancy over reason is a
degree of insanity; but while this power is such as we can controll and repress,
it is not visible to others, nor considered as any depravation of the mental
faculties: it is not pronounced madness but when it comes ungovernable, and
apparently influences speech or action.
    To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is
often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are
alone we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last
long; the ardour of inquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He
who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own
thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what
he is? He then expiatates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable
conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his
desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable
dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all
combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their
bounty, cannot bestow.
    In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention, all other
intellectual gratifications are rejected, the mind, in weariness or leisure,
recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious
falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the
reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotick.
Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the
mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.
    This, Sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the hermit has confessed
not always to promote goodness, and the astronomer's misery has proved to be not
always propitious to wisdom.«
    »I will no more, said the favourite, imagine myself the queen of Abissinia.
I have often spent the hours, which the princess gave to my
