with the surrender of some other interest, the diversion of his genius
out of its present channels. The strong emotions of the mind are not to
be turned off and on, to this subject and to that. If you begin early
with a human being, you may impress a particular direction upon the
feelings, you may even cross a natural tendency, and work up a taste on
a small basis of predisposition. Place any youth in the midst of
artists, and you may induce a taste for art that shall at length be
decided and strong. But if you were to take the same person in middle
life and immure him in a laboratory, that he might become an
enthusiastic chemist, the limits of human nature would probably forbid
your success.

Such very strong tastes as impart a high and perennial zest to one's
life are merely the special direction of a natural exuberance of feeling
or emotion. A spare and thin emotional temperament will undoubtedly have
preferences, likings and dislikings, but it can never supply the
material for fervour or enthusiasm in anything.

The early determining of natural tastes is a subject of high practical
interest. We shall only remark at present that a varied and broad
groundwork of early education is the best known device for this end.

* * * * *

[RELATION OF FEELINGS TO IMAGINATION.]

III. A third error, deserving of brief comment, is a singular inversion
of the relationship of the Feelings to the Imagination. It is frequently
affirmed, both in criticism and in philosophy, that the Feelings depend
upon, or have their basis in, the Imagination.