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ignorance of the people. But when a man's fancy gets astride on his
reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common
understanding as well as common sense is kicked out of doors, the
first proselyte he makes is himself; and when that is once
compassed, the difficulty is not so great in bringing over others, a
strong delusion always operating from without as vigorously as from
within. For cant and vision are to the ear and the eye the same
that tickling is to the touch. Those entertainments and pleasures
we most value in life are such as dupe and play the wag with the
senses. For if we take an examination of what is generally
understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the
understanding or the senses we shall find all its properties and
adjuncts will herd under this short definition, that it is a
perpetual possession of being well deceived. And first, with
relation to the mind or understanding, it is manifest what mighty
advantages fiction has over truth, and the reason is just at our
elbow: because imagination can build nobler scenes and produce more
wonderful revolutions than fortune or Nature will be at the expense
to furnish. Nor is mankind so much to blame in his choice thus
determining him, if we consider that the debate merely lies between
things past and things conceived, and so the question is only this:
whether things that have place in the imagination may not as
properly be said to exist as those that are seated in the memory?
which may be justly held in the affirmative, and very much to the
advantage of the former, since this is acknowledged to be the womb
of things, and the other allowed to be no more than the grave.
Again, if we take this definition of happiness and examine it with
reference to the senses, it will be acknowledged wonderfully adapt.
How sad and insipid do all objects accost us that are not conveyed
in the vehicle of delusion! How shrunk is everything as it appears
in the glass of Nature, so that if it were not for the assistance of
artificial mediums, false lights, refracted angles, varnish, and
tinsel, there would be a mighty level in the felicity and enjoyments
of mortal men. If this were seriously considered by the world, as I
have a certain reason to suspect it hardly will, men would no longer
reckon among their high points of wisdom the art of exposing weak
sides and publishing infirmities--an employment, in my opinion,
neither better nor worse than that of unmasking, which, I think, has
never been allowed fair usage, either in the world or the playhouse.
In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession of
the mind than curiosity, so far preferable is that wisdom which
converses about the surface to that pretended philosophy which
enters into the depths of things and then comes gravely back with
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