manner they contribute to that supreme intention of good to the whole.' --_Plato de Leg_. x. 16. This theory has been delivered of late, especially abroad, in a manner which subverts the freedom of human actions; whereas Plato appears very careful to preserve it, and has been in that respect imitated by the best of his followers. ENDNOTE T. '_One might rise, One order_,' etc.--P. 31. See the _Meditations_ of Antoninus and the _Characteristics_, passim. ENDNOTE U. '_The best and fairest_,' etc.--P. 32. This opinion is so old, that Timaeus Locrus calls the Supreme Being [Greek: demiourgos tou beltionos], the artificer of that which is best; and represents him as resolving in the beginning to produce the most excellent work, and as copying the world most exactly from his own intelligible and essential idea; 'so that it yet remains, as it was at first, perfect in beauty, and will never stand in need of any correction or improvement.' There can be no room for a caution here, to understand the expressions, not of any particular circumstances of human life separately considered, but of the sum or universal system of life and being. See also the vision at the end of the _Theodicee_ of Leibnitz. ENDNOTE V. '_As flame ascends_,' etc.--P. 32. This opinion, though not held by Plato nor any of the ancients, is yet a very natural consequence of his principles. But the disquisition is too complex and extensive to be entered upon here. ENDNOTE W. '_Philip_.'--P. 44. The Macedonian. BOOK THIRD. ENDNOTE X. '_Where the powers Of Fancy_,' etc.--P. 46. The influence of the imagination on the conduct of life is one of the most important points in moral philosophy. It were easy, by an induction of facts, to prove that the imagination directs almost all the passions, and mixes with almost every circumstance of action or pleasure. Let any man, even of the coldest head and soberest industry, analyse the idea of what he calls his interest; he will find that it consists chiefly of certain degrees of decency, beauty, and order, variously combined into one system, the idol which he seeks to enjoy by labour, hazard, and self-denial. It is, on this account, of the last consequence to regulate these images by the standard of nature and the general good; otherwise the imagination, by heightening some objects beyond their real excellence and beauty, or by representing others in a more odions or terrible shape than they deserve, may, of course, engage us in pursuits utterly inconsistent with the moral order of things.