told that they were going to do so. This species of slavish imagination, which generally is the lot of ignorant people, has been the instrument which the imagination of some men has employed to acquire and retain power. It is, moreover, this passive imagination of brains easily excited and agitated, which sometimes produces on the bodies of children evident marks of the impression received by the mother; examples of this kind are indeed innumerable, and the writer of this article has seen some so striking, that, were he to deny them, he must contradict his own ocular demonstration. This effect of imagination is incapable of being explained; but every other operation of nature is equally so; we have no clearer idea how we have perceptions, how we retain them, or how we combine them. There is an infinity between us and the springs or first principles of our

nature.

Active imagination is that which joins combination and reflection to memory. It brings near to us many objects at a distance; it separates those mixed together, compounds them, and changes them; it seems to create, while in fact it merely arranges: for it has not been given to man to make ideas—he is only able to modify them.

This active imagination then is in reality a faculty as independent of ourselves as passive imagination; and one proof of its not depending upon ourselves is, that if we propose to a hundred persons, equally ignorant, to imagine a certain new machine, ninety-nine of them will form no imagination at all about it, notwithstanding all their endeavours. If the hundredth imagines something, is it not clear that it is a particular gift or talent which he has received? It is this gift which is called' genius;' it is in this that we recognise something inspired and divine.

This gift of nature is an imagination inventive in the arts-in the disposition of a picture, in the structure of a poem. It cannot exist without memory, but it uses memory as an instrument with which it produces all its performances.

In consequence of having seen that a large stone

which the hand of a man could not move, might be moved by means of a staff, active imagination invented levers, and afterwards compound moving forces, which are no other than disguised levers. It is necessary to figure in the mind the machines with their various effects and processes, in order to the actual production of them.

It is not this description of imagination that is called by the vulgar the enemy of judgment. On the contrary, it can only act in union with profound judgment; it incessantly combines its pictures, corrects its errors, and raises all its edifices according to calculation and upon a plan. There is an astonishing imagination in practical mathematics; and Archimedes had at least as much imagination as Homer. It is by this power that a poet creates his personages, appropriates to them characters and manners, invents his fable, presents the exposition of it, constructs its complexity, and prepares its development: a labour, all this, requiring judgment the most profound and the most delicately discriminative.

A very high degree of art is necessary in all these imaginative inventions, and even in romances. Those which are deficient in this quality are neglected and despised by all minds of natural good taste. An invariably sound judgment pervades all the fables of Esop. They will never cease to be the delight of mankind. There is more imagination in the Fairy Tales; but these fantastic imaginations, destitute of order and good sense, can never be in high esteem; they are read childishly, and must be condemned by

reason.

The second part of active imagination is that of detail, and it is this to which the world distinguishingly applies the term. It is this which constitutes the charm of conversation, for it is constantly presenting to the mind what mankind are most fond of,- -new objects. It paints in vivid colours what men of cold and reserved temperament hardly sketch; it employs the most striking circumstances; it cites the most appropriate examples; and when this talent displays itself in union

VOL. IV.

M

with the modesty and simplicity which become and adorn all talents, it conciliates to itself an empire over society. Man is so completely a machine, that wine sometimes produces this imagination, as intoxication destroys it. This is a topic to excite at once humiliation and wonder. How can it happen that a small quantity of a certain liquor, which would prevent a man from effecting an important calculation, shall at the same time bestow on him the most brilliant ideas?

It is in poetry particularly that this imagination of detail and expression ought to prevail. It is always agreeable, but there it is necessary. In Homer, Virgil, and Horace, almost all is imagery, without even the reader's perceiving it. Tragedy requires fewer images, fewer picturesque expressions and sublime metaphors and allegories, than the epic poem and the ode; but the greater part of these beauties, under discreet and able management, produce an admirable effect in tragedy; they should never, however, be forced, stiltish, or gigantic.

Active imagination, which constitutes men poets, confers on them enthusiasm,-according to the true meaning of the Greek word, that internal emotion which in reality agitates the mind and transforms the author into the personage whom he introduces as the speaker; for such is the true enthusiasm, which consists in emotion and in imagery. An author under this influence says precisely what would be said by the character he is exhibiting.

Less imagination is admissible in eloquence than in poetry. The reason is obvious;-ordinary discourse should be less remote from common ideas. The ora

tor speaks the language of all: the foundation of the poet's performance is fiction. Accordingly, imagination is the essence of his art: to the orator it is only an

accessary.

Particular traits or touches of imagination have, it is observed, added great beauties to painting. That artifice especially is often cited, by which the artist covers with a veil the head of Agamemnon at the sa

crifice of Iphigenia; an expedient, nevertheless, far less beautiful than if the painter had possessed the secret of exhibiting in the countenance of Agamemnon the conflict between the grief of a father, the majesty of a monarch, and the resignation of a good man to the will of heaven; as Rubens had the skill to paint in the looks and attitude of Mary of Medicis the pain of childbirth, the joy of being delivered of a son, and the maternal affection with which she looks upon her child.

In general, the imaginations of painters when they are merely ingenious, contribute more to exhibit the learning in the artist than to increase the beauties of the art. All the allegorical compositions in the world are not worth the masterly execution and fine finish which constitute the true value of paintings.

In all the arts, the most beautiful imagination is always the most natural. The false is that which brings together objects incompatible; the extravagant paints object which have no analogy, allegory, or resemblance. A strong imagination explores everything to the bottom; a weak one skims over the surface; the placid one reposes in agreeable pictures; the ardent one piles images upon images. The judicious or sage imagination is that which employs with discrimination all these different characters, but which rarely admits the extravagant and always rejects the false.

If memory nourished and exercised be the source of all imagination, that same faculty of memory, when overcharged, becomes the extinction of it. Accordingly, the man whose head is full of names and dates does not possess that storehouse of materials from which he can derive compound images. Men occupied in calculation, or with intricate matters of business, have generally a very barren imagination.

When imagination is remarkably stirring and ardent, it may easily degenerate into madness; but it has been observed, that this morbid affection of the organs of the brain more frequently attaches to those passive imaginations which are limited to receiving strong impressions of objects, than to those fervent and active

ones which collect and combine ideas; for this active imagination always requires the association of judgment, the other is independent of it.

It is not perhaps useless to add to this essay, that by the words perception, memory, imagination, and judgment, we do not mean distinct and separate organs, one of which has the gift of perceiving, another of recollecting, the third of imagining, and the last of judging. Men are more inclined than some are aware to consider these as completely distinct and separate faculties. It is however one and the same being that performs all these operations, which we know only by their effects, without being able to know anything of that being itself.

SECTION II.

Brutes possess imagination as well as ourselves; your dog, for example, hunts in his dreams.

"Objects are painted in the fancy," says Descartes, as others have also said. Certainly they are; but what is the fancy, and how are objects painted in it? Is it with the subtle matter?" How can I tell? is the appropriate answer to all questions thus affecting the first principles of human organization.

Nothing enters the understanding without an image. It was necessary, in order to our obtaining the confused idea we possess of infinite space, that we should have an idea of a space of a few feet. It is necessary, in order to our having the idea of God, that the image of something more powerful than ourselves should have long dwelt upon our minds.

We do not create a single idea or image. I defy you to create one. Ariosto did not make Astolpho travel to the moon till long after he had heard of the moon, of St. John, and of the Paladins.

We make no images; we only collect and combine them. The extravagancies of the Thousand and One Nights and the Fairy Tales are merely combinations.

He who comprises most images in the storehouse of his memory, is the person who possesses most imagi

nation.