And this is sufficient to account for the objection.
Among the ancient philosophers, though we have several hints
concerning this influence of the imagination upon morals among the
remains of the Socratic school, yet the Stoics were the first who
paid it a due attention. Zeno, their founder, thought it impossible
to preserve any tolerable regularity in life, without frequently
inspecting those pictures or appearances of things, which the
imagination offers to the mind (_Diog. Laert_. I. vii.) The
meditations of M. Aurelius, and the discourses of Epictetus, are
full of the same sentiment; insomuch that the latter makes the
[Greek: Chresis oia dei, fantasion], or right management of the
fancies, the only thing for which we are accountable to Providence,
and without which a man is no other than stupid or frantic (_Arrian_.
I. i. c. 12. and I. ii. c. 22). See also the _Characteristics_,
vol. i. from p. 313 to 321, where this Stoical doctrine is embellished
with all the elegance and graces of Plato.
ENDNOTE Y.
'_How Folly's awkward arts_,' etc.--P. 47.
Notwithstanding the general influence of ridicule on private and
civil life, as well as on learning and the sciences, it has been
almost constantly neglected or misrepresented, by divines especially.
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