15 Oct r 1809 + '.2. Continued

Parl y Reform

{Ch.}1. Explan

{'.}/Ch./2. Influence on understanding

Instruments of fascination

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Influence the deceptitious[?] viz. by instruments of fascination is still influences of understanding on understanding ends[?]

through the medium of the imagination

Instruments[?] of fascination[?] chiefly [...?] an indication of peculiar qualities moral or intellectual.

In virtue of the well known principle of association - of the faculty that any two ideas that on former occasions have been present together in the mind, have of introducing each other on subsequent occasions, the imagination is apt to be wrought upon, and frequently with great force, by sensible objects of different classes, and more particularly by visible ones. In so far as the influence thus exerted on it by these objects is regarded as excessive, or as operating in a wrong direction, causing /so as to cause or tend to cause/ the imagination to lead the judgment into wrong conclusions, the objects which act in this manner on the imagination may be termed instruments of fascination.

To this head belong the several sensible material symbols by which in almost all countries the different classes and ranks and classes of men have come to be distinguished: in England the crown and sceptre of the King, the coronet of the Peer the star of the Knight, the uniform of the military officer, the robes and mass of artificial hair of the Judge and the Advocate - and so forth

It is only indeed in so far as the influence they respectively have on the imagination and through the medium of the imagination on the judgment, has the effect of giving to the authority of their several /respective/ [...?] and liveries more weight in the scale of reasoning /argumentation/ than properly belongs to it, than any such appellations /name[?]/ /appellatives/ as fascination, instruments of fascination can, with propriety, be respectively applicable to them.