Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

An Essay on Genius

London and Edinburgh

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

1774

"The imagination resembles a person attached to home, who cannot without reluctance undertake a long journey, but can with pleasure make short excursions, returning home from each, and thence setting out anew."

Further, a passion has an influence on the number, as well as on the nature of the ideas introduced. It tends so strongly to keep the attention fixt on the objects strictly connected with it, that it suffers not these to suggest a long train of ideas, successively related to each other. It generally allows us to go only one step or two beyond them; after we have been led by means of them to conceive one idea, we go not forward to the view of others associated with that; still the passion makes the object nearly allied to it, to dwell upon the thought; we recur to the contemplation of this object, and it suggests a new idea, related to itself but not to that idea which it had introduced formerly. In other cases, after the imagination has once received an impulse, it readily goes on from one perception through a number of others, till it arrive at a great distance from that with which it began: and it would be difficult to stop its career, to bring it back to the object from which it set out, or to make it enter into a different track. But when the mind is occupied by a passion, the difficulty lies wholly on the other side: the passion directs the view to things closely connected with it, so powerfully and so constantly, that the imagination is drawn backward to repeated conceptions of them: when our natural propensity to vary the object of our thought, indisposes us for dwelling longer on them alone, they yet retain their hold of us so far that we enter easily into another track pointed out by them: we cannot without a painful effort, often we cannot at all, proceed so long in one path as to leave them far behind us; all the ideas introduced after a few removes, are but slightly connected with the object which the passion disposes us to rest upon, and that passion checks all propensity to go through or attend to many ideas but slightly connected. The imagination resembles a person attached to home, who cannot without reluctance undertake a long journey, but can with pleasure make short excursions, returning home from each, and thence setting out anew. Opposite forces in mechanics tend to destroy one another. This is analogous to the case before us. The objects strictly connected with a passion are naturally fit for introducing ideas related to themselves; the passion acts in a contrary direction, and endeavours to keep the mind from running off to these: there is a perpetual struggle between the two. The passion having kept the attention fixt for some time on an object intimately connected with it, its force begins to flag: that object is conceived in a lively and vigorous manner, by reason of its relation to the passion, and therefore very powerfully draws in ideas associated with it. But the conception of all the succeeding objects drawn in by it, is still weaker and weaker; on this account their power of introducing ideas becomes continually less and less; so that after a few steps they give us a very inconsiderable propensity to go forward. The passion exerts a force superior to their's; it therefore prevails, it prevents farther association, it brings back the attention to some object closely connected with it, it invigorates the conception of that object so as to enable it to suggest a new idea; but it hinders us from going to a greater distance than before. Here we discover a new cause of that abruptness of thought which a passion occasions. It arises partly, we have seen, from the mind's dividing its attention between several objects all closely and almost equally connected with the passion; partly from the rapidity with which the mind takes in dissimilar views of any one of these objects; and partly from the struggle between objects suggested by the passion, and objects suggested by other means: but it also arises partly from the constant vibration of the thought between the objects immediately connected with the passion, and the ideas which they tend to introduce. The mind leaves any of these ideas as soon as it has conceived it, it lays hold of an object more closely connected with the passion, it runs from it to an idea suggested by it, but wholly unrelated to the former. This alone must produce a great want of connexion, and many breaks, in the expression of sentiments resulting from a passion. These principles now laid down, are sufficiently illustrated by the last example which we cited. Alonzo's grief made the loss of his son to suggest the distance of his daughter, and the consequence of that distance, the improbability of his ever seeing her; but without allowing him to pursue that thought, hurries him back to the loss of his son, and sets him a thinking on new circumstances connected with it. The marriage of his daughter, the loss of his son, the loss of his daughter, her distance, the little chance for his seeing her again, the loss of his son, his being heir to extensive territories, his being devoured by fishes, all succeed one another in his thoughts, with great abruptness and rapidity.
(II.iii, pp. 165-9)

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Only 1 entry in ESTC (1774).

An Essay on Genius. By Alexander Gerard, D.D. Professor of Divinity in King's College, Aberdeen. (London: Printed for W. Strahan; T. Cadell, and W. Creech at Edinburgh 1774). <Link to ECCO>

06/27/2013