1821 July 10

Constitut l. Code? Codification Offer

'9. Factitious dignity

IV. Factitious dignity

2. Irresistible force

Analogous case Ghosts

Practical inference Break the association - This J.B. is doing

The curious circumstance is the irresistible force with which in this instance the cause operates in the production of the effect. Here are a set of men whom taken in the aggregate I do not /can not upon reflection/ look upon as fit objects of a greater portion of esteem and respect and affection /love/ than nor even of so great a portion as an equal number of men taken at random. At the same time spite of myself by the idea of any one a greater degree of those social affections is excited than is excited by the idea of any one not possessed of any one of those symbols. Whence comes this? /this inconsistency?/. By a continually reiterated /renewed/ train of association commencing at the earliest dawn of reason this opinion of the constant connection between the possession of the sensible /external/ symbol in question and the mental quality in question has been created and confirmed: for the reproduction /revival/ of the false /erroneous/ opinion a single instant suffices at all times: for the expulsion of it nothing less than a train of reflection can suffice.

For /To/ This case I feel a very conformable parallel may be seen in the case of Ghosts and other fabulous maleficent beings which the absence of light presents to my mind's eye. To no man's judgment can the /could a stronger/ persuasion of the non-existence of these causes /sources/ of terror have place than in mine. Yet no sooner do I in a dark room lay myself down to sleep, than if no other person is in the room and my eyes keep open than these instruments of terror obtrude themselves, and to free myself from the annoyance I feel myself under the necessity of substituting to a degree /an extent/ more or less considerable, to those more or less pleasing ideas with which my mind would otherwise have been occupied, those reflections which are necessary to keep in my view the judgment by which the non-existence of these creatures of the imagination has so often been pronounced. Cause the stories told by servants. The tale of the apparition of Ghosts and Vampires is not more fabulous than is in general the tale of worth, moral or intellectual, as applied to those creatures of a Monarch who form the class of State dignitaries.