24.
When the Arabs had no trace of literature or ſcience, they compoſed beautiful verſes on the ſubjects of love and war. The flights of the imagination, and the laboured deductions of reaſon, appear almoſt incompatible.
25.
Poetry certainly flouriſhes moſt in the firſt rude ſtate of ſociety. The paſſions ſpeak moſt eloquently, when they are not ſhackled by reaſon. The ſublime expreſſion, which has been ſo often quoted, [Geneſis, ch. 1, ver. 3.] is perhaps a barbarous flight; or rather the grand conception of an uncultivated mind; for it is contrary to nature and experience, to ſuppoſe that this account is founded on facts—It is doubtleſs a ſublime allegory. But a cultivated mind would not thus have deſcribed the creation—for, arguing from analogy, it appears that creation muſt have been a comprehenſive plan, and that the Supreme Being always uſes ſecond cauſes, ſlowly and ſilently to fulfil his purpoſe. This is, in reality, a more ſublime view of that power which wiſdom ſupports: but it is not the ſublimity that would ſtrike the impaſſioned mind, in which the imagination took place of intellect. Tell a being, whoſe affections and paſſions have been more exerciſed than his reaſon, that God ſaid, Let there be light! and there was light; and he would proſtrate himſelf before the Being who could thus call things out of nothing, as if they were: but a man in whom reaſon had taken place of paſſion, would not adore, till wiſdom was conſpicuous as well as power, for his admiration muſt be founded on principle.
26.
Individuality is ever conſpicuous in thoſe enthuſiaſtic flights of fancy, in which reaſon is left behind, without being loſt ſight of.
27.
The mind has been too often brought to the teſt of enquiries which only reach to matter—put into the crucible, though the magnetic and electric fluid eſcapes from the experimental philoſopher.
28.