Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Of Imagination [from Dissertations Moral and Critical]

London

Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell ... and W. Creech

1783

"While we listen to a discourse, or read a book, how often , in spite of all our care, does the fancy wander, and present thoughts quite different from those we have in view! "

The human soul is essentially active; and none of our faculties are more restless, than this of Imagination, which operates in sleep, as well as awake. While we listen to a discourse, or read a book, how often , in spite of all our care, does the fancy wander, and present thoughts quite different from those we have in view! That energy, which lays a restraint upon the fancy, by fixing the mind on one particular object, or set of objects, is called Attention: and most people know, that the continued exercise of it is accompanied with difficulty, and something of intellectual weariness. Whereas, when, without attending to any one particular idea, we give full scope to our thoughts, and permit them to shift, as Imagination or accident shall determine, a state of mind which is called Reverie; we are conscious of something like mental relaxation; while one idea brings in another, which gives way to a third, and that in its turn is succeeded by others; the mind seeming all along to be passive, and to exert as little authority over its thoughts, as the eye does over the persons who pass before it in the street. The succession of these wandering ideas is often regulated by Memory; as when the particulars of a place we have seen, or of a conversation we [end page 78] have witnessed, pass in review before us. At other time, our thoughts have less connection to reality, and follow each other in an order, in which, perhaps, they never appeared before.
(II.i, pp. 78-9)

Motion::Wandering Population

Reading

At least 2 entries in ESTC (1783).

Beattie, James. Dissertations Moral and Critical. Printed for Strahan, Cadell, and Creech: London, 1783. Facsimile-Reprint: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1970.

07/25/2005