The imagination is a quality of the soul, not only a brilliant but an
happy one, for it is more frequently the cause of our happiness, than of
our misery; it presents us with more pleasures than vexations, with more
hopes than fears. Men of dull and heavy dispositions, who are not
affected by any thing, vegetate and pass their lives in a kind of
tranquility, but without pleasure or delight; like animals which see,
feel, and taste nothing, but that which is under their eyes, paws, or
teeth; but the imagination, which is proper to man, transports us beyond
ourselves, and makes us taste future and the most distant pleasures. Let
us not be told, that it makes us also foresee evils, pains, and
accidents, which will perhaps never arrive: it is seldom that
imagination carries us to these panic fears, unless it be deranged by
physical causes. The sick man sees dark phantoms, and has melancholy
ideas; the man in health has no dreams but such as are agreeable; and as
we are more frequently in a good, than a bad state of health, our
natural state is to desire, to hope, and to enjoy. It is true, that the
imagination, which gives us some agreeable moments, exposes us, when
once we are undeceived, to others which are painful. There is no person
who does not wish to preserve his life, his health, and his property;
but the imagination represents to us our life, as a thing which ought to
be very long; our health established and unchangeable; and our fortune
inexhaustible: when the two latter of these illusions cease before the
former, we are much to be pitied.
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