Page:Treatise of Human Nature (1888).djvu/654

631 A note to Book I. page 100. line 35. after these words (immediate impression).

''Nafurane nobis, inquil, datum dicam, an errore quodam, ut, cum ea loca videamus, in quibus memoria dignos viros acceptimus multum esse versato, magis moveamur, quam siquando eorum ipsorum aut facta audiamus, aut scriptum aliquod legamus? velut ego nunc moveor. Venil enim mihi Platonis in mentem: quem accipimus primum hic disputare solitum: Cujus etiam illi hortuli propinqui non memoriam solum mihi afferunt, sed ipsum videntur in conspectu meo hic ponere. Hic Speusippus, hic Xenocrates, hic ejus auditor Polemo; cujus ipsa illa sessio fuit, quam videamus. Equidem etiam curiam nostrum, hostiliam dico, non hanc novam, quæ mihi minor esse videtur postquam est major, solebam intuens Scipionem, Catonem, Lælium, nostrum vero in primus avum cogitare. Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis; ut non sine causa ex his memoriæ ducta sit disciplina.'' Cicero de Finibus, lib. 5.

To be inserted in Book I. page 123. line 26. after these words (impressions of the senses.) beginning a new paragraph.

We may observe the same effect of poetry in a lesser degree; and this is common both to poetry and madness, that the vivacity they bestow on the ideas is not deriv'd from the particular situations or connexions of the objects of these ideas, but from the present temper and disposition of the person. But how great soever the pitch may be, to which this vivacity rises, 'tis evident, that in poetry it never has the same feeling with that which arises in the mind, when we reason, tho' even upon the lowest species of probability. The mind can easily distinguish betwixt the one and the other; and whatever emotion the poetical enthusiasm may give to the spirits, 'tis still the mere phantom of belief or persuasion. The case is the same with the idea, as with the passion it occasions. There is no passion of the human