The sage confessed to Imlac, that since he had mingled in the gay tumults of life, and divided his hours by a succession of amusements, he found the conviction of his authority over the skies fade gradually from his mind, and began to trust less to an opinion which he never could prove to others, and which he now found subject to variation, from causes in which reason had no part.  “If I am accidentally left alone for a few hours,” said he, “my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence; but they are soon disentangled by the prince’s conversation, and instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah.  I am like a man habitually afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at the dread which harassed him in the dark; yet, if his lamp be extinguished, feels again the terrours which he knows, that when it is light he shall feel no more.  But I am sometimes afraid, lest I indulge my quiet by criminal negligence, and voluntarily forget the great charge with which I am intrusted.  If I favour myself in a known errour, or am determined, by my own ease, in a doubtful question of this importance, how dreadful is my crime!”

“No disease of the imagination,” answered Imlac, “is so difficult of cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt:  fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other.  If fancy presents images not moral or religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain, but when melancholick notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or banish them.  For this reason, the superstitious are often melancholy, and the melancholy almost always superstitious.

“But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your better reason:  the danger of neglect can be but as the probability of the obligation, which, when you consider it with freedom, you find very little, and that little growing every day less.  Open your heart to the influence of the light, which, from time to time, breaks in upon you:  when scruples importune you, which you, in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or to Pekuah, and keep this thought always prevalent, that you are only one atom of the mass of humanity, and have neither such virtue nor vice, as that you should be singled out for supernatural favours or afflictions.”

CHAP.  XLVII.

THE PRINCE ENTERS, AND BRINGS A NEW TOPICK.

“All this,” said the astronomer, “I have often thought, but my reason has been so long subjugated by an uncontroulable and overwhelming idea, that it durst not confide in its own decisions.  I now see how fatally I betrayed my quiet, by suffering chimeras to prey upon me in secret; but melancholy shrinks from communication, and I never found a man before, to whom I could impart my troubles, though I had been certain of relief.  I rejoice to find my own sentiments confirmed by yours, who are not easily deceived, and can have no motive or purpose to deceive.  I hope that time and variety will dissipate the gloom that has so long surrounded me, and the latter part of my days will be spent in peace.”