What but this faculty of imagination dispenses reputation, awards respect and veneration to persons, works, laws, and the great?  How insufficient are all the riches of the earth without her consent!

Would you not say that this magistrate, whose venerable age commands the respect of a whole people, is governed by pure and lofty reason, and that he judges causes according to their true nature without considering those mere trifles which only affect the imagination of the weak?  See him go to sermon, full of devout zeal, strengthening his reason with the ardour of his love.  He is ready to listen with exemplary respect.  Let the preacher appear, and let nature have given him a hoarse voice or a comical cast of countenance, or let his barber have given him a bad shave, or let by chance his dress be more dirtied than usual, then however great the truths he announces.  I wager our senator loses his gravity.

If the greatest philosopher in the world find himself upon a plank wider than actually necessary, but hanging over a precipice, his imagination will prevail, though his reason convince him of his safety.[49] Many cannot bear the thought without a cold sweat.  I will not state all its effects.

Every one knows that the sight of cats or rats, the crushing of a coal, etc. may unhinge the reason.  The tone of voice affects the wisest, and changes the force of a discourse or a poem.

Love or hate alters the aspect of justice.  How much greater confidence has an advocate, retained with a large fee, in the justice of his cause!  How much better does his bold manner make his case appear to the judges, deceived as they are by appearances!  How ludicrous is reason, blown with a breath in every direction!

I should have to enumerate almost every action of men who scarce waver save under her assaults.  For reason has been obliged to yield, and the wisest reason takes as her own principles those which the imagination of man has everywhere rashly introduced. [He who would follow reason only would be deemed foolish by the generality of men.  We must judge by the opinion of the majority of mankind.  Because it has pleased them, we must work all day for pleasures seen to be imaginary; and after sleep has refreshed our tired reason, we must forthwith start up and rush after phantoms, and suffer the impressions of this mistress of the world.  This is one of the sources of error, but it is not the only one.]

Our magistrates have known well this mystery.  Their red robes, the ermine in which they wrap themselves like furry cats,[50] the courts in which they administer justice, the fleurs-de-lis, and all such august apparel were necessary; if the physicians had not their cassocks and their mules, if the doctors had not their square caps and their robes four times too wide, they would never have duped the world, which cannot resist so original an appearance.  If magistrates had true justice, and if physicians had the true art of