CHAP. tion. A synod of such critics, as these translators Of Imagina- into, and out of a language so little known to them, gravely sitting in judgment and deliberately passing sentence upon the works of persons of real talents and learning, is in itself only ridiculous; but their decisions being listened to and received by the public is a melancholy symptom of the decline of taste and literature. dotus and Gray: for though the Doctor expressed something more than mere suspicion of the Homeric Poems being of different authors; and the Professor has published many an elaborate discourse to prove that they are not merely of two, but of at least twenty, it is denied that either of them ever suspected the existence of such a paradox; and a question, which has been publicly agitated for at least two thousand years, is said never to have been thought of till my arrogance ventured to move it!!! See British Critic for January and February 1807. Having learnt, from long observation of the world, that of all the great qualities of great men, great impudence is the most irresistible, I shall here adopt the prudent silence of parson Adams towards the redoubted Doctor of the same school, who usually travelled with the works of Hippocrates and Galen in his pocket: Μη μοι γοργειην κεφαλην δείνοιο πελωρου CHAPTER III. OF JUDGMENT. 1. JUDGMENT is more properly the result of a faculty than a faculty itself; it being the decision, which reason draws from comparison: whence the word is commonly used to signify the talent of deciding justly and accurately in matters, that do not admit of mathematical demonstration; in which sense, judgment may be properly considered as a mode of action of reason. It is the opposite of wit, as Locke, and after him, the author of the Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful have justly observed; wit being chiefly employed in discovering resemblances, and judgment in detecting differences. 2. Reason, in the strict sense of the word, has little or nothing to do with taste; for taste depends upon feeling and sentiment, and not upon demonstration or argument. The word beauty is, indeed, often applied to a syllogism or a problem; but then it means clearness, point, or precision; or whatever else be the characteristic excellence of that, to which it is applied. So far as reason is employed upon relations of number and quan CHAP. Of Judg- CHAP. III. Of Judg ment. tity it is certain and decisive; and thus far its results must appear the same to all mankind : but, though it is common, in the laxity of colloquial speech, to say that we feel the force of a demonstration; yet feeling has in reality no concern in it; demonstration being purely a matter of science. 3. No reasoning, except that upon the relations of number and quantity, admits of absolute demonstration; for all reasoning from cause and effect, or from analogy or similitude, is from the habitual association of ideas, and consequently can amount to no more than this; that the thing appears so to us, because it always has appeared so, and we know of no instance to the contrary. I have seen the sun set to-night, and conclude that it will rise again to-morrow; because my own experience and the tradition received from others have taught me to associate the idea of its rising again, after a certain number of hours, with that of its setting; and habit has rendered these ideas inseparable. But, nevertheless, I can give no demonstrative reason from the nature of things why it should rise again; or why the Creator and Governor of the universe may not launch it, as a comet, to wander for ever through the boundless vacuity of space. I only know that during the short period, and within the narrow sphere, which bound my knowledge of this universe, he hath displayed no such irregular exertions of power: but still that period, and that sphere shrink into nothing in the scale of eternity and infinity; and what can man know of the laws of God or nature, that can enable him to prescribe rules for Omnipotence? 4. What we call the laws of nature are merely certain rules of analogy, which we draw from the general results both of mathematical demonstration, and habitual association; and employ, as the general criteria of our belief, in those particulars, of which we have no actual experience. 5. In matters of demonstration, these rules are fixed and certain: for we know that the relative proportions of a triangle must still be the same, whatever be its actual dimensions. But, in things, that we know merely from the habitual association of ideas, they are only probable; and our assent or dissent to them can amount only to belief or disbelief: I believe it impossible for one man to drive an army of fifty thousand before him, because I have never known any such disparity in individual men: but, nevertheless, I cannot demonstrate, from any certain principles of science, that there might not have been a particular man endued with such a degree of superiority over the rest of his fellow creatures. CHAP. III. Of Judg ment. CHAP. Of Judg ment. 6. This distinction is of little or no importance in the common concerns of life: for we are no more disposed to doubt that the sun will rise to-morrow morning, than that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles: but, nevertheless, it is of the utmost importance in fixing the just bounds of poetical fiction; and that is the subject, to which the nature of my present inquiry leads me to apply it. 7. One of the boldest of the bold fictions of the Odyssey is the poet's making Ulysses swim during three days and two nights without food or rest: but, nevertheless, this does not destroy, or even lessen the interest of the story; for though, as the human frame now appears to us, we know that there is no man capable of such exertions; and may thence believe that no man ever was: yet this is mere belief, founded on no demonstration, and may therefore differ in different individuals. The Indian prince thought it impossible that water should become hard; and the inhabitant of the South Sea island, that it should become hot, for exactly the same reasons, as induce us to think it impossible that glass should become malleable, or iron become transparent; which reasons are merely habits of association arising from uninterrupted and unvaried experience and observation. |