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from the dull flame of his midnight lamp, while the drowsy influence of the senses obstrusively remind him that he is not all spirit and intellectual flame; the trader who commits himself to the mercy of the winds and waves, and congeals beneath the rigour of contending elements;-the pugilist who exposes his natural limbs and body to be broken by hands which seem invigorated by nature itself for the commission of ferocious deeds, and to whose inexorable feelings the associations of pity seem to be totally unknown ;-all are urged forward by one common motive,-the love of happiness; and all are in pursuit of the same objectthe attainment of that happiness to which they are so ardently devoted.

As the love of happiness, then, is the prime mover of human actions; as we love nothing but what tends to promote it, and hate nothing but what tends to diminish it; would we not seem obliged by the strictest and most rigid laws of reasoning to conclude, that whatever is painful must be hateful to us, because pain is the opposite to pleasure or happiness? The conclusion, however, is disproved by the emotions produced in us by Tragic Representations; for all who have felt these emotions profess to be pleased with them; and those who have had most opportunities of feeling them, are those who delight most in renewing them frequently. Will we say, then, that Tragic representations

are not painful, and, consequently, that there is nothing mysterious in the supposed pleasure we receive? To maintain this position is only to render the subject still more mysterious than it is already; for it is a fundamental principle in criticism, that the emotions produced in us by imitations of every description, are of the same nature and character with the emotions produced by the originals from which they are copied. The only difference they admit is in the degree, not in the nature, of the emotions; that is, the emotion produced by the object imitated, is stronger than any emotion which can be excited by the most perfect imitation of it.

"L'impression que ces imitations font sur nous," says Du Bos, "est du même genre que l'impression que l'objet même qui a eté imité par le peintre, ou par le poëte feroit sur nous. Mais comme l'impression que l'imitation fait n'est differente de l'impression que l'objet imité feroit qu'en ce qu'elle est moins forte, elle doit exciter dans notre ame, une passion qui resemble a celle que l'objet imité y auroit pû exciter." Lord Kaimes maintains the same doctrine, in his Elements of Criticism, and so do all eminent writers on the imitative arts.

If, then, all imitations, as poetry, painting, dramatic representations, &c. excite emotions similar to those excited by their archetypes in nature, it follows, that Tragic representations must excite the emotions produced by real calamity and mis

fortune, and such emotions are always found to be painful. We cannot see a person in distress without being pained at his misery; and where the degree of wretchedness is extreme, some people cannot endure to behold its ill-fated victim. The sensation which it produces is frequently found to overpower a person of weak nerves, or extreme sensibility. As real distress is, therefore, painful, imaginary distress must be so also, because the copy and the original produce the same effect. The difficulty, then, which has perplexed the critics, consists in this, that Tragic representations produce pleasure and pain at the same moment. It is to explain this apparent mystery that so many writers have treated on the subject, and attempted to resolve this Gordian Knot; but it will clearly appear from the following pages, that the mystery still remains, and that this Gordian Knot is as fast and complicated as ever.

UNIVERSITY

CALIFORNIA

CHAP. II.

Impossibility of forming an obscure conception of a primary Cause until it be perfectly discovered. Obscure ideas have no existence.

WHEN I first reflected on the difficulty of explaining how the same sensation should be at once pleasant and painful, I consulted several works on the subject before I discovered that Hume devoted one of his Essays to the resolution of this curious phenomenon. Du Bos, Lord Kaimes, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Blair, Knight, Lessing, Schlegel, Fontenelle, and almost all the writers who have attempted to explain it, may be more properly considered critics than philosophers; or, if this distinction should appear obscure, as criticism and philosophy sometimes glide into each other, they were better qualified to distinguish between impressions, and to point out the "rainbow hues" which connect them together, than to trace these impressions, and their voluble, impalpable connectives to their original source. The common

observer perceives effects and impressions in the gross, but cannot ascertain their momentum, or the precise point to which they do, and beyond which they cannot extend. This is the business of the critic his duty is to point out where propriety ends, and where absurdity begins; and, therefore, the true critic never outsteps the modesty of nature. But the philosopher, not satisfied with marking the proper boundaries that distinguish impressions, and their immediate causes from each other, seeks to trace each of them distinctly to its primary source.

As the resolution of the present problem belongs to philosophy, and not to criticism, I was not much surprised to find the writers whom I have now mentioned, in their attempts to trace the pleasure resulting from Tragic Representation to its original cause, not only contradicting each other, but contradicting those first truths or principles of reasoning, which are admitted by themselves, and by all mankind. He who contradicts first truths, however, will frequently be found to contradict himself, because he is continually admitting these truths where they serve to support his collateral or incidental arguments. That this has been the case with the writers who have treated on the present subject, will manifestly appear from the following pages. In detecting their inconsistencies and self-contradic