at the assistance is mutual betwixt
the judgment and fancy, as well as betwixt the judgment and passion;
and that belief not only gives vigour to the imagination, but that a
vigorous and strong imagination is of all talents the most proper to
procure belief and authority. It is difficult for us to withhold our
assent from what is painted out to us in all the colours of eloquence;
and the vivacity produced by the fancy is in many cases greater than
that which arises from custom and experience. We are hurried away by the
lively imagination of our author or companion; and even he himself is
often a victim to his own fire and genius.

Nor will it be amiss to remark, that as a lively imagination very often
degenerates into madness or folly, and bears it a great resemblance in
its operations; so they influence the judgment after the same manner,
and produce belief from the very same principles. When the imagination,
from any extraordinary ferment of the blood and spirits, acquires such a
vivacity as disorders all its powers and faculties, there is no means
of distinguishing betwixt truth and falshood; but every loose fiction or
idea, having the same influence as the impressions of the memory, or
the conclusions of the judgment, is received on the same footing, and
operates with equal force on the passions. A present impression and a
customary transition are now no longer necessary to enliven our ideas.
Every chimera of the brain is as vivid and intense as any of those
inferences, which we formerly dignifyed with the name of conclusions
concerning matters of fact, and sometimes as the present impressions of
the senses.

We may observe the same effect of poetry in a lesser degree; and this is
common both to poetry and madness, that the vivacity they bestow on the
ideas is not derived from the particular situations or connexions of the
objects of these ideas, but from the present temper and disposition
of the person. But how great soever the pitch may be, to which this
vivacity rises, it is evident, that in poetry it never has the same
feeling with that which arises in the mind, when we reason, though even
upon the lowest species of probability. The mind can easily distinguish
betwixt the one and the other; and whatever emotion the poetical
enthusiasm may give to the spirits, it is still the mere phantom of
belief or persuasion. The case is the same with the idea, as with the
passion it occasions. There is no passion of the hum