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itlea of the statue a third time , frith quite different impressions as to its form and expression ; When 1 actually see the statue , however , the reality is . probajbly quite . different in form and e ^ pressipn frpm all my previous imaginations . What teal interest then could j pbssibly nave had ih the statue itself ? My interest was imaginary only . We take the same kind of interest in forming- ideas of good for others in future , as for ourselves , and our . imagination redresses
their past wrongs ( and thus the past is unconsciously projected into and identified with the future ) by the exercise of thie same faculty that enables us to contemplate and mentally redress our own . But as to reality * we certainly do not know , and we very often care as little , what is to happen to ourselves in future : it has no more eflfect upon us in any way than if it were never to happen ; ' for how can a thing which is not affect us in reality ?
But the probability , it will be said , may alarm the imagination . True , it may ; which is a petitio principii ; but we know from sorrowful experience that it very seldom does ; and when it does , how often the feet turns out quite differently , thus proving the fallacy of the assumed principle , and showing that we possess no
faculty giving us a real present interest in the future . Man stands like a speck upon a progressive point , between two eternities . Our present self is ' rounded by a sleep ;* but the only fixed stars that illumine man ' s dreamy system , shine from the past , and penetrate a portion only of illimitable space , which our thoughts can reach with no more certitude than the atoms that compose our
bodies . We have no sensation and no knowledge of the future ; the sun of hope is a fiction which the wisdom of the Creator has implanted in our minds with all the force of anticipated reality . But we have no sure mental warning of any coming reality . The objects of the future may be as I imagine ; but it may contain no real objects for me . Until I am practically conscious of them , the objects of my future have no actual existence ; and if they
become realized > they cannot be the same I contemplated , for that would be to confound the thing with its ideal semblance . My future may have real objects ; but if I die before they are actually impressed upon nay senses , they are proved , so far as I am concerned , to be mere fictions of my brain . And thus we all die ; for our imaginations ever precede our present identities , and herald us onward towards the bourne of this ' phantasmal scene . *
The imagination is the only faculty referring to future action . Man is practically selfish , more or less , according to individual nature , education , and circumstances ; and mentally so , as to the past and present , by reason of the exclusiveness and circumscribed powers of memory and sensation ; but there is no necessary and exclusive self-interest in the imagination , which is the common property of all humanity—a prevision for benevolence in the human constitution . ThtAuthot of The Exposition of the False Medium . *
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Haziitt ^ FfrH Essay . 485
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No . 103 . 2 N
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1835, page 485, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2647/page/49/
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