Burke had indisputably a powerful imagination.  He had both elements:—­the intellectual power, or the richly stored and highly productive mind; and the emotional power, or the strength of passion that gives the lead to intellect.  His intellectual strength was often put forth in the Baconian manner of illustration, in light and sportive fancies.  There were many occasions where his feelings were not much roused.  He had topics to urge, views to express, and he poured out arguments, and enlivened them with illustrations.  He was, on those occasions, an able expounder, and no more.  But when his passions were stirred to the depths by the French Revolution, his intellectual power, taking a new flight, supplied him with figures of extraordinary intensity; it was no longer the play of a cool man, but the thunders of an aroused man; we have then “the hoofs of the swinish multitude,”—­“the ten thousand swords leaping from their scabbards”.  Such feelings were not produced by the speaker’s imagination:  they were produced by themselves; they had their independent source in the region of feeling:  coupled with adequate powers of intellect, they burst out into strong imagery.[3]

The Orientals, as a rule, are distinguished for imaginative flights.  This is apparent in their religion, their morality, their poetry, and their science.  The explanation is to be sought in the strength of their feelings, coupled with a certain intellectual force.  The same intellect, without the feelings, would have issued differently.  The Chinese are the exception.  They want the feelings, and they want the imagination.  They are below Europeans in this respect.  When we bring before them our own imaginative themes, our own cast of religion, accommodated as it is to our own peculiar temperament, we fail in the desired effect.  Our august mysteries are responded to, not with reverential regard, but with, cold analysis.

The Celt and the Saxon are often contrasted on the point of imagination; the prior fact is the comparative endowment for emotion.

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[HOW HAPPINESS SHOULD BE AIMED AT.]

IV.  There is a fallacious mode of presenting the attainment of happiness; namely, that happiness is best secured by not being aimed at.  We should be aiming always at something else.

When examined closely, the doctrine resolves itself into a kind of paradox.  All sorts of puzzles come up when we attempt to follow it to its consequences.

We might ask, first, whether there is any other object of pursuit in the same predicament—­wealth, health, knowledge, fame, power.  These are, every one, a means or instrument of happiness, if not happiness itself.  Must we, then, in the case of each, avoid aiming straight at the goal? must we look askance in some other direction?

Next, in the case of happiness proper, are we to aim at nothing at all, to drift at random; or may we aim at a definite object, provided it is not happiness; or, lastly, is there one side aim in particular that we must take?  The answer here would probably be—­Aim at duty in general, and at the good of others in particular.  These ends are not the same as happiness, yet by keeping them steadily in the view, and not thinking of self at all, we shall eventually realise our greatest happiness.