The pleasures of imagination. A poem / In three books.

  • Mark Akenside
Date:
1754
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pleasures of imagination. A poem / In three books. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    32/144 (page 28)
    With tranfport once; the fond attentive »aze Of young aftonifhment; the fober zeal Of sequence of the love of novelty, objects which at firll were highly delightful to the mind, iofe that effed by repeated at¬ tention to them. But the inilance of habit is oppos’d to this obfeivation ; for there, objeds at firll diflafleful are in time ren¬ der’d intirely agreeable by repeated attention. The difficulty in this cafe will be removed, if we confider, that when objeds at firll agreeable, lofe that influence by fre¬ quently recurring, the mind is wholly pajjive, and the percep¬ tion involuntary ; but habit, on the other hand, generally fupn pofes choice and ahfivity accompanying it; fo that the pleafure arifes here not from the objed, Jmt from the mind’s con/cious determination of its own adivity ; and confequently increafes in proportion to the frequency of that determination. It will Hill be urged perhaps, that a familiarity with dif- agreeable objeds renders them at length acceptable, even when there is no room®for the mind to refolve or aB at all. In this cafe, the appearance mull be accounted for, one ofthpfe ways. ' The plealure from habit may be meerly negative. The ob- jed at firll gave uneaflnefs : this uneafinefs gradually wears off as the objed grows familiar: and the mind finding it at lafl in- tirply removed, reckons its fituation really pleafurable, com¬ par’d with what it had experienced before. The diflike conceiv’d of the objed at firfl, might be owing to prejudice or want of attention. Confequently the mind being necefiitated to review it often, may at length perceive its own imllake, and be reconcil d to what it had look’d on with aver- $Qnf In which cafe, a fort of inflindivc ji^ftice naturally leads h