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 ...

IMAGINATION.:361
a fastidious refinement, unsuitable to the present situation of
human nature; and those intellectual and moral habits, which
ought to be formed by actual experience of the world, may be
gradually so accommodated to the dreams of poetry and romance,
as to disqualify us for the scene in which we are destined to act.
Such a distempered state of the mind is an endless source of
error; more particularly when we are placed in those critical
situations, in which our conduct determines our future happiness
or misery; and which, on account of this extensive influence
on human life, form the principal groundwork of fictitious comlposition. The effect of novels, in misleading the passions of
youth, with respect to the most interesting and important of all
relations, is one of the many instances of the inconveniences
resulting from an ill-regulated imagination.
The passion of love'has been in every age the favorite subject of the poets, and has given birth to the finest productions
of human genius. These are the natural delight of the young
and susceptible, long before the influence of the passions is felt;
and from these a romantic mind forms to itself an ideal model
of beauty and perfection, and becomes enamored with its own
creation. On a heart which has been long accustomed to be
thus warmed by the imagination, the excellences of real characters make but a slight impression; and, accordingly, it will be
found, that men of a romantic turn, unless when under the influence of violent passions, are seldom attached to a particular
object. Where, indeed, such a turn is united with a warmth
of temperament, the effects are different; but they are equalily
fatal to happiness. As the distinctions which exist among real
characters are confounded by false and exaggerated conceptions
of ideal perfection, the choice is directed to some object by
caprice and accident; a slight' resemblance is mistaken for an
exact coincidence; and the descriptions of the poet and novelist
are applied literally to an individual, who perhaps falls short of
the common standard of excellence. "' I am certain'," says the
author last quoted, in her account of the character of Rousseau,
" that he never formed an attachment which wzeas not founded on
caprice. It was illusions alone that could captivate his pas31