s of their power. And
since, by its influence on our manners and our passions, it is of such
great consequence, I shall here venture to lay down a rule, which may
inform us with a good degree of certainty when we are to attribute the
power of the arts to imitation, or to our pleasure in the skill of the
imitator merely, and when to sympathy, or some other cause in
conjunction, with it. When the object represented in poetry or painting
is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality, then I may
be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the power of
imitation, and to no cause operating in the thing itself. So it is with
most of the pieces which the painters call still-life. In these a
cottage, a dung-hill, the meanest and most ordinary utensils of the
kitchen, are capable of giving us pleasure. But when the object of the
painting or poem is such as we should run to see if real, let it affect
us with what odd sort of sense it will, we may rely upon it that the
power of the poem or picture is more owing to the nature of the thing
itself than to the mere effect of imitation, or to a consideration of
the skill of the imitator, however excellent. Aristotle has spoken so
much and so solidly upon the force of imitation in his Poetics, that it
makes any further discourse upon this subject the less necessary.

SECTION XVII.

AMBITION.

Although imitation is one of the great instruments used by Providence in
bringing our nature towards its perfection, yet if men gave themselves
up to imitation entirely, and each followed the other, and so on in an
eternal circle, it is easy to see that there never could be any
improvement amongst them. Men must remain as brutes do, the same at the
end that they are at this day, and that they were in the beginning of
the world. To prevent this, God has planted in man a sense of ambition,
and a satisfaction arising from the contemplation of his excelling his
fellows in something deemed valuable amongst them. It is this passion
that drives men to all the ways we see in use of signalizing themselves,
and that tends to make whatever excites in a man the idea of this
distinction so very pleasant. It has been so strong as to make very
miserable men take comfort, that they were supreme in misery; and
certain it is that, where we cannot distinguish ourselves by something
excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities,
follies, or defects of one kind or