The museum of Delaware. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1804-1806, 1804-11-10
FROM THE ENQUIRER.
ON THE ILLUSIONS OF FANCY.

No single faculty of the mind affords
materials for such various and curious dis
QUESTIONS as the fancy, or imagination
The metaphysician views it as the mimic
OF the senses, whose functions it sometimes
so aptly performs, as to impose on the mind
fiction for truth. In thus substituting the
pictures or mages Of its own creation, for
those of nature, he perceives that it only Sc
parates or combines those ideas which were
impaired by the senses and rcposited in the
memory: That it can generate no simple
idea, but is merely the intellectual aftificer
who makes fabric of the materials with
which it is furnished ty the senses. In the
course of his enquiry into the principles of
its operation, he is astonished to find that
even this power of separating or combining
has its limits and that, with all the seeming
irregular and discurslve movements oil the
fancy, there are but two or three natural
relations, which as pous voldns enable it to
pass from one region oil thought to another !;
and that the mind Can never shift itself from
idea to idea. unless there is .nA..''-.it.r r
une or place !; resemblance or c0ntiaSt be-
tween them. Thus this lively faculty,
whose anomalies seemed at first view to de-
fy the powers of human investigation, is
found to act upon principles at once ,cgu-
lar, simple, and few. Different persons
possess in different degrees the power OF per-
ceiving what is contiguous in time OF place,
and what is like or unlike; according to
which degree they are said " to have an
active, or a dull imagination," and some
times I" to possess or to want fancy"
Since eloquence and poetry owe their
highest ornaments 10 the Imagination, it ma
turally becomes one of the principal topics
of literary criticism. As it is the object of
the orator to persuade, and of the poet to
please, the critic considers the fancy merely
as an instrument for these purposes, and de-
rives set of rules Tor the laws OF nature,
by which he ascertains the means to the ends.
He points out where a loose should be given
to the native inpctuosity of the Imagination,
and where ITS unlimited sallies should be
curbed : shews what passages possess the
awful grandeur Of the sublime and what the
attractive loneliness of beauty, and distin-
guishes those pictures of fancy which are
dissonant to nature from those which are hit
Oft in the spirits of her finest models. In a
word, guided at one and the same time by
the most liberate feelings OF the heart and
the incest dictates of reason, he praises or
hlames the works Of imagination according
to the judgment of taste.
Nor is this busy faculty unworthy the
consideration Of the mo,alit. Our desires
and aversions either derive new vigor from
the imagination or owe their existence to it
altogether. it is sometimes their parent
and always their nurse. By its extensive
influence over our pleasures and our pains it
goes far towards regulating our moral con-
duct, and according to the direction it may
take, gives birth TO the sublimest heroisln or
the most unnatural depravty.
To shcw the full extent of its influence
on human happiness would lead me into
too wide a field of moral and metaphysi-
cal speculation but as branch Of he sub
ject, propose to shew how much it tends
to substitute falsehood for truth, by cnunle-
rating the most ordinary illusions of fancy :
in which enumeration, the examples are Ell
Their the result of my own observations, or
are believed to be in strict analogy with
the acknowledged principles of the human
nature.