LETTER XX. THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.

If these words denote pleasures which have no reality, let us no longer use them.[47] The person who, during the twelve hours of every day that he passed in sleep, believed himself clothed with royal authority, shared a lot exactly similar to the king who, dreaming through the same number of hours, imagined that he suffered cold and hunger, and asked the pity of the peasants in the streets.

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All our pleasures are fugitive, and they are all real. That wonderful faculty, the imagination, awakens past pleasures, charms the instant that is flowing, and either veils the future, or embellishes it in the radiance of hope.

Let us banish that vulgar prejudice which represents reason and imagination as two enemies which cannot co?xist. The severest reason ought to disdain no easy and pure pleasures. The happy paintings even of a dream bring joy, until their rainbow hues melt away. The dreams of the imagination have greatly the advantage over those of sleep. Our will gives them birth. We prolong, dissipate and renew them at pleasure.[48] All, who have learned to multiply these happy moments, know, at the same time, how to enjoy these agreeable visions, and paint with enchantment those dreamy hours which they owe to the effervescence of a gay imagination.

There are situations in which reason has no better counsel to give us than to yield ourselves up to those illusions which mingle pleasures with our sufferings. I knew a worthy, but unfortunate man, who passed twenty months in prison. He informed me that, every night, he had a dream, in which he imagined that his wife and children visited him and restored him to liberty. This dream left a remembrance so profound, an emotion so delightful, that he determined to attempt to renew it by day. When evening came, exciting his imagination to its most vigorous action, he endeavored to persuade himself that the moment of the reunion was come. He represented to himself the transport of his wife and the caresses of his children; and he allowed no thought but these delightful visions to occupy his[146] mind until the moment when sleep once more wrapped him in forgetfulness. The habit of concentrating his imagination for this result, he assured me, finally rendered these illusions incredibly vivid and real. He expected night with impatience; and the certainty that the close of day would bring some happy moments, threw over the tedious hours an emotion which mitigated his sufferings.

These charming illusions, in misfortune, resemble those brilliant boreal lights which, in the midst of a night that lasts for weeks, present the image of dawn during the dreary winters of the polar circle. An excitable and vivid faculty, which deceives misfortune, ought to embellish happiness. To the pleasant things we possess, it adds those we desire. By its magic, we renew the hours of which the memory is dear. We taste the pleasures which a distant future promises; and see, at least, the fleeting shadow of those which are passing away.

A gloomy philosopher has told us, that such illusions are the effect of a transient insanity. It seems to me that insane thoughts are those which create ennui; and that reasonable ideas are those which throw innocent charms over life. If you reject these views, be persuaded, at least, not to adopt a false and gloomy wisdom. You ought rather to prefer the conviction that everything below is folly.[50] But still, I can distinguish gay follies, frightful follies, and amiable follies; and I easily discover that there is a choice among them.

Why should the morose being who perceives only bad people on the earth, and only miseries in the future, blame him who cradles flattering hopes, always springing[147] up anew, for allowing himself to be beguiled by the illusions of his imagination? Both deceive themselves. But the one cherishes a mistake which brings hatred and suffering, and the other lives on gaily in his illusions.

Wisdom does not disdain a faculty merely for being brilliant; and, to taste all the pleasures of imagination, it is indispensable that reason should be much exercised.

Imagination resembles the magician of an oriental romance who transports his favorite hero to scenes of enchantment, to try him with pleasures; and then delivers him over to a hostile magician, who multiplies peril and misery around him. This creative faculty, in its perversion, is as fertile to invent torments as, in its more propitious moods, to bring forth pleasures. If once we resign ourselves to its gloomy caprices, it conjures up the terror of a thousand unreal evils. Reason cannot always follow its meteor path; but ought, at least, to point out the course in which happiness invites it to walk.

The aid of reason is still more necessary at the moment when the chimeras of imagination disappear. It is an afflicting moment. Reason should prepare us to meet it. Every man, with an elevated mind and a good heart, has delighted to imagine himself far away from the stupid and wicked; in a smiling country, separated from the rest of the world, and alone with a few friends. Suppose this dream realized; I am aware that, tomorrow, the peaceful exile might be indulging regrets for the place he had left; and forming plans to escape from the ennui of the new country. Since we change our destiny in these respects, without altering our instinctive desire of change, let us study the art of softening the[148] pains of our actual condition; and let us learn to extract all possible advantages from it by imparting to it, if nothing more, the embellishment created by the happy anticipations of a fertile imagination.

Ought we to indulge regrets because these paintings of the imagination so rapidly disappear. I have seen the rich and the great stripped, in a moment, of their fortune and power; and shall I afflict myself because my dream has vanished? These unfortunate people lost all that was dear to them, forever. For me, I can renew these pleasures of imagination at my will.

Far from sacrificing any of our faculties, let us exercise them all; and let them mutually conduce to our happiness. As we advance in life, our reason should grow to the calm of mature age. But let the imagination and the heart still preserve scintillations of the fire of youth.