habit of association to which I formerly gave the name of Fancy, as it is this which presents to our choice all the different materials which are subservient to the efforts of imagination, and which may therefore be considered as forming the ground-work of poetical genius."

(By Fancy in this passage, we find on referring to the chapter treating of it, that nothing more is meant than the rapid occurrence of ideas of sense to the mind.)

Now, in this definition, the very point and purpose of all the inquiry is missed. We are told that judgment or taste "directs the combination." In order that anything may be directed, an end must be previously determined; what is the faculty that determines this end? and of what frame and make, how boned and fleshed, how conceived or seen, is the end itself? Bare judgment, or taste, cannot approve of what has no existence; and yet by Dugald Stewart's definition we are left to their catering among a host of conceptions, to produce a combination which, as they work for, they must see and approve before it exists. This power of prophecy is the very essence of the whole matter, and it is just that inexplicable part which the metaphysician misses.

stance nuga

As might be expected from his misunderstanding of the faculty, § 4. This inhe has given an instance entirely nugatory. It would be difficult tory. to find in Milton a passage in which less power of imagination was shown, than the description of Eden, if, as I suppose, this be the passage meant, at the beginning of the fourth book, where I can find three expressions only in which this power is shown; the "burnished with golden rind, hung amiable" of the Hesperian fruit, the "lays forth her purple grape" of the vine and the "fringed

1 He continues thus: "To illustrate these observations, let us consider the steps by which Milton must have proceeded, in creating his imaginary garden of Eden. When he first proposed to himself that subject of description, it is reasonable to suppose that a variety of the most striking scenes which he had seen, crowded into his mind. The association of ideas suggested them, and the power of conception placed each of them before him with all its beauties and imperfections. In every natural scene, if we destine it for any particular purpose, there are defects and redundancies, which art may sometimes, but cannot always correct. But the power of Imagination is unlimited. She can create and annihilate, and dispose at pleasure, her woods, her rocks, and her rivers. Milton, accordingly, would not copy his Eden from any one scene, but would select from each the features which were most eminently beautiful. The power of abstraction enabled him to make the separation, and taste directed him in the selection."

bank with myrtle crowned" of the lake; and these are not what Stewart meant but only that accumulation of bowers, groves, lawns, and hillocks, which is not imagination at all, but composition, and Hence, if we take any passage in

§ 5. Various that of the commonest kind.

instances.

which there is real imagination, we shall find Stewart's hypothesis not only inefficient and obscure, but utterly inapplicable.

Take one or two at random.

"On the other side,

Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burned
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war.'

(Note that the word incensed is to be taken in its literal and material sense, set on fire.) What taste or judgment was it that directed this combination? or is there nothing more than taste or judgment here?

"Ten paces huge

He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee

His massy spear upstaid, as if on earth

Winds under ground, or waters forcing way
Sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat

Half-sunk with all his pines.

"Together both 'ere the high lawns appeared

Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove a field, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn.

"Missing thee, I walk unseen

On the dry smooth shaven green,
To behold the wandering moon

Riding near her highest noon,

Like one that had been led astray,

Through the heavens' wide pathless way,

And oft as if her head she bowed

Stooping through a fleecy cloud."

It is evident that Stewart's explanation utterly fails in all these instances, for there is in them no "combination" whatsoever, but a particular mode of regarding the qualities or appearances of a single thing, illustrated and conveyed to us by the image of another; and the act of imagination, observe, is not the selection of this image, but the mode of regarding the object.

But the metaphysician's definition fails yet more utterly, when we look at the imagination neither as regarding, nor combining, but as penetrating.

"My gracious Silence, Hail!

Wouldst thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home

That weep'st to see me triumph. Ah! my dear,

Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,

And mothers that lack sons."

How did Shakspeare know that Virgilia could not speak?

This knowledge, this intuitive and penetrative perception, is still one of the forms, the highest, of imagination, but there is no combination of images here.

operations of

tive, Associa

We find, then, that the imagination has three totally distinct § 6. The three functions. It combines, and by combination creates new forms; the Imaginabut the secret principle of this combination has not been shown by the tion. PenetraAnalysts. Again, it treats, or regards, both the simple images and tive, Contemplative. its own combinations in peculiar ways; and, thirdly, it penetrates, analyses, and reaches truths by no other faculty discoverable. These its three functions, I shall endeavour to illustrate, but not in this order the most logical mode of treatment would be to follow the order in which commonly the mind works; that is, penetrating first, combining next, and treating or regarding, finally; but this arrangement would be inconvenient, because the acts of penetration and of regard are so closely connected, and so like in their relations to other mental acts, that I wish to examine them consecutively; and the rather, because they have to do with higher subject matter than the mere act of combination, whose distinctive nature, that property which makes it imagination and not composition, it will, I think, be best to explain at setting out, as we easily may, in subjects familiar and material. I shall therefore examine the imaginative faculty in these three forms; first, as Combining or Associative; secondly, as Analytic or Penetrative; thirdly, as Regardant or Contemplative.

CHAPTER II.

OF IMAGINATION ASSOCIATIVE.

§ 1. Of simple In order to render our inquiry as easy as possible, we shall consider conception. the dealing of the Associative imagination with the simplest possible matter, that is, with conceptions of material things. First, therefore, we must define the nature of these conceptions themselves.

After beholding and examining any material object, our knowledge respecting it exists in two different forms. Some facts exist in the brain in a verbal form, as known, but not conceived; as, for instance, that it was heavy or light, that it was eight inches and a quarter long, &c., of which length we cannot have accurate conception, but only such a conception as might attach to a length of seven inches or nine; and which fact we may recollect without any conception of the object at all. Other facts respecting it exist in the brain in a visible form, not always visible, but visible at will, as its being of such a colour, or having such and such a complicated shape; as the form of a rosebud for instance, which it would be difficult to express verbally, neither is it retained by the brain in a verbal form, but a visible one; that is, when we wish for knowledge of its form for immediate use, we summon up a vision or image of the thing; we do not remember it in words, as we remember the fact that it took so many days to blow, or that it was gathered at such and such a time.

The knowledge of things retained in this visible form is called Conception by the Metaphysicians, which term I shall retain; it is inaccurately called Imagination by Taylor, in the passage quoted by Wordsworth in the preface to his poems; not but that the term Imagination is etymologically and rightly expressive of it, but we want that term for a higher faculty.

nected with

There are many questions respecting this faculty of conception of § 2. How convery great interest; such as the exact amount of aid that verbal Verbal knowknowledge renders to visible knowledge (as, for instance, the verbal ledge. knowledge that a flower has five, or seven, or ten petals, or that a muscle is inserted at such and such a point of the bone, aids the conception of the flower or the limb); and again, what amount of aid the visible knowledge renders to the verbal; as for instance, whether any one, being asked a question about some animal or thing which instantly and from verbal knowledge he cannot answer, may have such power of summoning up the image of the animal or thing as to ascertain the fact by actual beholding, (which I do not assert, but can conceive to be possible); and again, what is that indefinite and subtle character of the conception itself in most men which admits not of being by themselves traced or realized, and yet is a sure test of likeness in any representation of the thing; like an intaglio, with a front light on it, whose lines cannot be seen, and yet they will fit one definite form only, and that accurately; these and many other questions it is irrelevant at present to determine,1 since to forward our present purpose, it will be well to suppose the conception aided by verbal knowledge to be absolutely perfect; and we will suppose a man to retain such clear image of a large number of the material things he has seen, as to be able to set down any of them on paper, with perfect fidelity and absolute memory2 of their most minute features.

In thus setting them down on paper, he works, I suppose exactly as he would work from nature, only copying the remembered image in his mind, instead of the real thing. He is, therefore, still nothing more than a copyist. There is no exercise of imagination in this whatsoever.

But over these images, vivid and distinct as nature herself, he § 3. How used in composition. has a command which over nature he has not. He can summon any that he chooses; and if, therefore, any group of them which he received from nature be not altogether to his mind, he is at liberty

1 Compare Chapter IV. of this Section.

2 On the distinction rightly made by the Metaphysicians between conception absolute, and conception accompanied by reference to past time, (or memory,) it is of no use here to insist.