"made fecure of victory and happiness, with the "greatest facility, and in the highest degree poffible: "In this manner he ordered through the entire cir❝cle of being, the internal constitution of every "mind, where should be its station in the univerfal "fabric, and through what variety of circumstan

ces it should proceed in the whole tenour of its "existence." He goes on in his fublime manner to affert a future ftate of retribution," as well for "thofe who, by the exercife of good difpofitions "being harmonized and affimilated into the divine "virtue, are confequently removed to a place of "unblemished fanctity and happiness; as of those "who by the most flagitious arts have risen from " contemptible beginnings to the greatest affluence "and power, and whom you therefore look upon "as unanswerable inftances of negligence in the

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gods, because you are ignorant of the purposes

" to which they are subservient, and in what man

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ner they contribute to that fupreme intention of "good to the whole." PLATO de Leg. x. 16.

This theory has been delivered of late, especially abroad, in a manner which fubverts the freedom of human actions; whereas Plato appears very careful to preserve it, and has been in that refpect imitated by the best of his followers.

Ver. 321.

-one might rife,

One order, &c.

See the Meditations of Antoninus, and the Cha

racteristics, paffim.

Ver. 355. The beft and faireft, &c.

This opinion is fo old, that Timæus Locrus calls the Supreme Being δημιεργὸς τῷ βελτίον©, “ the "artificer of that which is beft ;" and represents him as refolving in the beginning to produce the most excellent work, and as copying the world moft exactly from his own intelligible and effential idea ; fo that it yet remains, as it was at firft, perfect in beauty, and will never ftand in need of any

N

142

NOTES ON THE SECOND BOOK.

"correction or improvement." There can be no room for a caution here, to understand the expres fions, not of any particular circumstances of human life feparately confidered, but of the fum or univerfal system of life and being. See also the vision at the end of the Theodicée of Leibnitz,

Ver. 305. As flame afcends, &c.

This opinion, though not held by Plato nor any of the ancients, is yet a very natural confequence of his principles. But the difquifition is too complex and extenfive to be entered upon here.

Ver. 755 Philip.

The Macedonian.

THE influence of the imagination on the conduct of life, is one of the most important points in moral philofophy. It were eafy by an induction of facts to prove that the imagination directs almost all the paffions, and mixes with almoft every circumstance of action or pleasure. Let any man, even of the coldeft head and sobereft industry, analyse the idea of what he calls his intereft; he will find that it confists chiefly of certain degrees of decency, beauty, and order, variously combined into one system, the idol which he feeks to enjoy by labour, hazard, and

felf-denial. It is on this account of the last confe

quence to regulate these images by the standard of nature and the general good; otherwise the imagination, by heightening some objects beyond their real excellence and beauty, or by representing others in a more odious or terrible shape than they deserve, may of course engage us in pursuits utterly inconfiftent with the moral order of things.

If it be objected that this account of things fupposes the paffions to be merely accidental, whereas there appears in some a natural and hereditary difpofition to certain paffions prior to all circumftances of education or fortune; it may be answered, that though no man is born ambitious or a mifer, yet he may inherit from his parents a peculiar temper or complexion of mind, which fhall render his imagination more liable to be struck with some particular objects, consequently dispose him to form opinions of good and ill, and entertain passions of a particular turn. Some men, for instance, by the