eed turns to a plant. The reasoning employed, no
doubt, makes references to facts of the order of nature; but it is
circuitous and analogical, and is admitted merely because better cannot
be had.

[THREE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF ASSERTIONS.]

The peculiarity of this last class of affirmations is that they give
great room for the indulgence of our likings. So little being fixed with
any precision, we can shape our beliefs to please ourselves. Even as
regards the sensible world, we can sometimes accommodate our views to
what we wish, as when we assume that our favourite foods and stimulants
are wholesome; but such license soon meets with checks in the physical
sphere, while there are no such checks in the realms of the
superphysical.

Now, in all these three departments of opinion, the interest of mankind
lies in obtaining the best views that can possibly be obtained. As
regards the first and third--- the region of true and false, one in the
sensible, the other in the supersensible world--we are clearly
interested in getting the truth. As regards the second--the region of
ends--if there be one class of ends preferable to another, we should
find out that class.

The only doubt that can arise anywhere is, whether in the third case--the
case of the supernatural,--truth is of the same consequence to us. Such
a doubt, however, begs the whole question at issue. If the truth be of
no consequence here, it is because we shall never be landed in any
reality corresponding to what is declared: that the nature of the future
life is purely imaginary and not to be converted into fact; in other
words, that there is no future life; that there is merely a land of
dreams and fiction, which can never be proved true and never proved
false. It would then be a projection of thought from the present life,
and would cease with that life. All that people could claim in the
matter would be the liberty of imagination; and this being so, we are
not to be committed to any one form. In short, we are to picture what we
please in a world that cannot be made out to exist. The point is not, to
be true or false; it is, to be well or ill imagined.

What, then, is to be the criterion of proper or improper imagination? On
what grounds are we to make our preference between the different schemes
of the supersensible world? Is each one of us to be free to imagine for
ourselves, or are we to submit to the dictation of others? These
questions lead up to another.