He who has nothing
external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own
thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is
pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity,
and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present
moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible
enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The
mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all
combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with
all their bounty, cannot bestow.
In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all
other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in
weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favorite conception,
and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with
the bitterness of truth. By degrees, the reign of fancy is
confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time, despotic. Then
fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon
the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.[191]
The resemblance between Johnson's "Rasselas" and Voltaire's "Candide"
is so marked, that had either author seen the other's work, he must
have been suspected of imitation.
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