Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

246 THE INFLUENCE OF CASUAL ASSOCIATIONS.
external object which custom has rendered the cause or the
occasion of agreeable emotions, is indifferent to our happiness.
The effect which the beauties of nature produce on the mind of
the poet is wonderfully heightened by association; but his enjoyment is not on that account the less exquisite; nor are the objects
of his admiration of the less value to his happiness, that they derive their principal charms from the embellishments of his fancy.
After all the complaints that have been made of the peculiar
distresses which are incident to cultivated minds, who would
exchange the sensibilities of his intellectual and moral being
for the apathy of those whose only avenues of pleasure and
pain are to be found in their animal nature; "who move
thoughtlessly in the narrow circle of their existence, and to
whom the falling leaves present no idea but that of approaching
winter? " — Goethe.
Effects which education might produce. -- It is the business of
education, not to counteract, in any instance, the established
laws of our constitution, but to direct them to their proper purposes. That the influence of early associations on the mind
might be employed, in the most effectual manner, to aid our moral
principles, appears evidently from the effects which we daily see
it produce, in reconciling men to a course of action whicl
their reason forces them to condemn; and it is no less obvious
that by means of it, the happiness of human life might be increased, and its pains diminished, if the agreeable ideas and
feelings which children are so apt to connect with events and
with situations which depend on the caprice of fortune, were
firmly associated in their apprehensions with the duties of their
stations, with the pursuits of science, and with those beauties of
nature which are open to all.
These observations coincide nearly with the ancient Stoical
doctrine concerning the influence of imagination * on morals;
* According to the use which I makie of the words imnagination and associationl in this work, their effects are obviously distinguishable. I have
thought it proper, however, to illustrate the difference between them a little
more fully.
The difference between the effects of association and of imagination, in