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126 with a kind of authority, and will not be kept out or dislodged; but, as if the passion that rules were for the time the sheriff of the place, and came with all the posse, the understanding is seized and taken with the object it introduces, as if it had a legal right 1o be alone considered there. There is scarcely anybody I think of so calm a temper who hath not some time found this tyranny on his understanding, and suffered under ‘the inconvenience of it. Who is there almost whose mind, at some time or other, love or anger, fear or grief, has not so fastened to some clog that it could not turn itself to any other object? I call it a clog, for it hangs upon the mind so as to hinder its vigor and activity in the pursuit of other contemplations; and advances itself little or not at all in the knowledge of the thing which it so closely hugs and constantly pores on. Men thus possessed are sometimes as if they were so in the worse sense, and lay under the power of an enchantment. They see not what passes before their eyes, hear not the audible discourse of the company, and when by any strong application to them they are roused a little, they are like men brought to themselves from some remote region; whereas in truth