gines that it gives a fatisfactory anfwer when s it tells you, that an object whofe name it knows not is a thing, and fancies that it informs you of fomething, when it thus afcertains to which of the two moft obvious and comprehenfive claffes of objects a particular impreffion ought to be referred; to the clafs of realities or folid fubftances which it calls things, or to that of appearances which it calls nothings. Whatever, in fhort, occurs to us we are fond of referring to fome fpecies or clafs of things, with all of which it has a nearly exact refemblance and though we often know no more about them than about it, yet we are apt to fancy that by being able to do so, we fhow ourselves to be better acquainted with it, and to have a more thorough infight into its nature. But when fomething quite new and fingular is prefented, we feel ourselves incapable of doing this. The memory cannot, from all its ftores, caft up any image that nearly resembles this ftrange appearance. If by fome of its qualities it feems to refemble, and to be connected with a fpecies which we have before been acquainted with, it is by others feparated and detached from that, and from all the other affortments of things we have hitherto been able to make. It stands alone and by itself in the imagination, and refufes to be grouped or confounded with any II. SEC T. fet of objects whatever. The imagination and memory exert themselves to no purpose, and in vain look around all their claffes of ideas in order to find one under which it may be arranged. They fluctuate to no purpose from thought to thought, and we remain ftill uncertain and undetermined where to place it, or what to think of it. It is this fluctuation and vain recollection, together with the emotion or movement of the fpirits that they excite, which constitute the fentiment properly called Wonder, and which occafion that staring, and fometimes that rolling of the eyes, that fufpenfion of the breath, and that fwelling of the heart, which we may all obferve, both in ourfelves and others, when wondering at some new object, and which are the natural symptoms of uncertain and undetermined thought. What fort of a thing can that be? What is that like? are the queftions which, upon fuch an occafion, we are all naturally difpofed to afk. If we can recollect many fuch objects which exactly resemble this new appearance, and which present themselves to the imagination naturally, and as it were of their own accord, our Wonder is entirely at an end. If we can recollect but a few, and which it requires too fome trouble to be able to call up, our Wonder is indeed diminished, but not quite destroyed. If we can recollect none, but are quite at a lofs, it is the greatest poffible. II. With what curious attention does a natu- SE C T. ralift examine a fingular plant, or a fingular foffil, that is prefented to him? He is at no lofs to refer it to the general genus of plants or foffils; but this does not fatisfy him, and when he confiders all the different tribes or fpecies of either with which he has hitherto been acquainted, they all, he thinks, refufe to admit the new object among them. It ftands alone in his imagination, and as it were detached from all the other fpecies of that genus to which it belongs. He labours, however, to connect it with fome one or other of them. Sometimes he thinks it may be placed in this, and fometimes in that other affortment; nor is he ever satisfied, till he has fallen upon one which, in most of its qualities, it refembles. When he cannot do this, rather than it should ftand quite by itself, he will enlarge the precincts, if I may fay fo, of fome fpecies, in order to make room for it; or he will create a new fpecies on purpose to receive it, and call it a Play, of Nature, or give it fome other appellation, under which he arranges all the oddities that he knows not what elfe to do with. But to fome clafs or other of known objects he muft refer it, and betwixt it and them he must find out fome resemblance or other, before he can get rid of that Wonder, that uncertainty and anxious curiofity excited by its fingular appearance, and by its diffimilitude F 3 SEC T. litude with all the objects he had hitherto obferved. II. As fingle and individual objects thus excite our Wonder when, by their uncommon qualities and fingular appearance, they make us uncertain to what fpecies of things we ought to refer them; fo a fucceffion of objects which follow one another in an uncommon train or order, will produce the fame effect, though there be nothing particular in any one of them taken by itself. When one accustomed object appears after another, which it does not ufually follow, it firft excites, by its unexpectedness, the fentiment properly called Surprise, and afterwards, by the fingularity of the fucceffion, or order of its appearance, the fentiment properly called Wonder. We ftart and are furprised at feeing it there, and then wonder how it came there. The motion of a small piece of iron along a plain table is in itself no extraordinary object, yet the perfon who first faw it begin, without any visible impulfe, in confequence of the motion of a loadstone at fome little diftance from it, could not behold it without the moft extreme Surprise; and when that momentary emotion was over, he would ftill wonder how it came to be conjoined to an event with which, according to the ordinary train of things, he could have fo little fufpected it to have any connection. When II. When two objects, however unlike, have sECT. often been obferved to follow each other, and have conftantly prefented themselves to the fenfes in that order, they come to be connected together in the fancy, that the idea. of the one feems, of its own accord, to call up and introduce that of the other. If the objects are ftill obferved to fucceed each other as before, this connection, or, as it has been called, this affociation of their ideas, becomes ftricter and stricter, and the habit of the imagination to pafs from the conception of the one to that of the other, grows more and more rivetted and confirmed. As its ideas move more rapidly than external objects, it is continually running before them, and therefore anticipates, before it happens, every event which falls out according to this ordinary courfe of things. When objects fucceed each other in the fame train in which the ideas of the imagination have thus been accustomed to move, and in which, though not conducted by that chain of events prefented to the fenfes, they have acquired a tendency to go on of their own accord, fuch objects appear all clofely connected with one another, and the thought glides easily along them, without effort and without interruption. They fall in with the natural career of the imagination; and as the ideas which reprefented fuch a train of things would feem all mutually F 4 |