Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/221

 The body politic, the body natural, the world natural, the universe;—The human mind, the minds of brutes on one hand, and of superior beings on the other, and even the Infinite Mind himself;—the appellations of father, governor, judge, king, architect, &c. referred to ;—the ages of man, the ages of the world, the seasons of the year, the times of the day;—the offices, professions, and trades, of different persons, statesmen, generals, divines, lawyers, physicians, merchants;—the terms night, sleep, death, chaos, darkness, &c. also light, life, happiness, &c. compared with each other respectively; life and death, as applied in different senses to animals, vegetables, liquors, &c.—earthquakes, storms, battles, tumults, fermentations of liquors, law-suits, games, &c. families, bodies politic lesser and greater, their laws, natural religion, revealed religion, &c. &c. afford endless instances of analogies natural and artificial. For the mind being once initiated into the method of discovering analogies, and expressing them, does by association persevere in this method, and even force things into its system by concealing disparities, magnifying resemblances, and accommodating language thereto. It is easy to see, that in the instances last alleged, the terms used are for the most part literal only in one sense, and figurative in all their other applications. They are literal in the sense which was their primary one, and figurative in many or most of the rest. Similes, fables, parables, allegories, &c. are all instances of natural analogies improved and set off by art. And they have this in common to them all, that the properties, beauties, perfections, desires, or defects and aversions, which adhere by association to the simile, parable, or emblem of any kind, are insensibly, as it were, transferred upon the thing represented. Hence the passions are moved to good or to evil. Speculation is turned into practice, and either some important truth felt and realized, or some error and vice gilded over and recommended.



there is a great difficulty through the want of sufficient data. I will assume a few of those that appear to me most probable, and just shew the method of applying the doctrine of association to them; leaving it to learned men, as they become possessed of more and more certain data, to make farther advances.

I suppose then, that Adam had some language, with some instinctive knowledge concerning the use of it, as well as concerning divine and natural things, imparted to him by God at his creation. It seems indeed, that God made use of the visible appearances or actions, or perhaps of the several cries of the