on
together, and that nothing, which affects the former, can be entirely
indifferent to the latter. Wherever our ideas of good or evil acquire a
new vivacity, the passions become more violent; and keep pace with
the imagination in all its variations. Whether this proceeds from
the principle above-mentioned, that any attendant emotion is easily
converted into the predominant, I shall not determine. It is sufficient
for my present purpose, that we have many instances to confirm this
influence of the imagination upon the passions.

Any pleasure, with which we are acquainted, affects us more than any
other, which we own to be superior, but of whose nature we are wholly
ignorant. Of the one we can form a particular and determinate idea:
The other we conceive under the general notion of pleasure; and it is
certain, that the more general and universal any of our ideas are, the
less influence they have upon the imagination. A general idea, though
it be nothing but a particular one considered in a certain view, is
commonly more obscure; and that because no particular idea, by which we
represent a general one, is ever fixed or determinate, but may easily
be changed for other particular ones, which will serve equally in the
representation.

There is a noted passage in the history of Greece, which may serve for
our present purpose. Themistocles told the Athenians, that he had formed
a design, which would be highly useful to the public, but which it was
impossible for him to communicate to them without ruining the execution,
since its success depended entirely on the secrecy with which it should
be conducted. The Athenians, instead of granting him full power to
act as he thought fitting, ordered him to communicate his design to
Aristides, in whose prudence they had an entire confidence, and
whose opinion they were resolved blindly to submit to. The design of
Themistocles was secretly to set fire to the fleet of all the Grecian
commonwealths, which was assembled in a neighbouring port, and which
being once destroyed would give the Athenians the empire of the sea
without any rival Aristides returned to the assembly, and told them,
that nothing coued be more advantageous than the design of Themistocles
but at the same time that nothing coued be more unjust: Upon which the
people unanimously rejected the project.

A late celebrated historian [Mons. Rollin {Charles Rollin, HISTOIRE
ANCIENNE.(Paris 1730-38)}.] admires this passage of a