CHAPTER VI. ON IMAGINATION. VI. description manifesta tions. MAGINATION is the Proteus of the CHAPTER mind, and the despair of metaphysics. When the philosopher seizes it, he a general finds something quite unexpected in his grasp, of imaginaa faculty that takes many shapes and eludes tion and its him in all. First it appears as mere memory, and perhaps the inquirer lets it escape in that disguise as an old friend that need not be interrogated. If, however, he retain his hold of it, ere long it becomes other than memory; suddenly it is the mind's eye; sudden again, a second sight; anon it is known as intuition; then it is apprehension; quickly it passes into a dream; as quickly it resolves itself into sympathy and imitation; in one moment it turns to invention and begins to create; in the next moment it adopts reason and begins to generalize; at length it flies in a passion, and is CHAPTER lost in love. It takes the likeness, or apes the VI. style by turns of every faculty, every mood, every motion of thought. What is this Proteus of the mind that so defies our search? and has it like him of the sea, a form and character of its own, which after all the changes of running water and volant flame, rock, flower, and strange beast have been outdone, we may be able to fix Has imagin- and to define? Is there such a thing as imacharacter of gination different from the other faculties of the its own? mind? and if so, what is it? ation a strikes one when we What most Any one attempting to grapple with this question, will at once be struck with a remarkappy able fact. Everybody knows that imagination into the sways and overshadows us, enters into all our this power studies and elaborates all our schemes. If we the inquiry nature of -the ac knowledged swerve from the right path, it is fancy, we are imagina- told, that has led us astray; if we pant after potency of tion. splendid achievement, forsooth, it is the spirit of romance that leads us on. Imagination, say the philosophers and divines, the Humes and Bishop Butlers, is the author of all error, and the most dangerous foe to reason; it is the delight of life, say the poets, the spur of noble ambition, the vision and the faculty divine. For good or ill, it gives breath and colour to all our actions; even the hardest and driest of men are housed in dreams; it may be dreams of tallow or treacle or turnips, or tare and tret; but in dreams they move. By all accounts, the imagination is thus prevalent in human life, and the language of all men, learned and simple, bears witness to its CHAPTER puissance. VI. withstand philosophers us what it nill, do not tell First- is. Nevertheless, imagination, thus rife, thus But notpotent, whose dominion, even if it be that of ing its a tyrant against whom it is wisdom to rebel, potency, the we all acknowledge, whose yoke, will or we all wear-is as the unknown god. born of the intellectual gifts, it is the last studied and the least understood. Of all the strange things that belong to it, the strangest is that much as the philosophers make of it, much as they bow to it, they tell us nothing about it or next to nothing. This is no hyperbole, but a plain fact. Any one, who, fired by the magnitude and variety of the effects attributed to imagination, inquires into the nature of their causes, will be amazed at the poverty of all that has been written on the subject, and the utter inadequacy of the causes assigned. Most philosophers, though they defer to popular usage in speaking of imagination, yet when they examine it closely, allow it no place whatever among the powers of the human mind. In the And indeed account of our faculties given by Locke, and that it is almost every other English psychologist, down nought. to Herbert Spencer, the imagination is put out of doors and treated as nought. The chief source of illusion, it is itself an illusion; it is an impostor; it is nothing; it is some other faculty. I repeat that here I am using no figure of speech, but speaking literally. Whereas in common assure us CHAPTER parlance and in popular opinion imagination is VI. always referred to as a great power, the authorities in philosophy resolve it away. It is some other faculty, or a compound of other faculties. It is reason out for a holiday; it is perception in a hurry; it is memory gone wild; it is the dalliance of desire; it is any or all of these together. The current opinions I have summarised in The sum of the information about it which I have been able to glean I have endeavoured to the parable convey in the parable of Proteus. One man says of Proteus. this, and another man says that. Each one gives a little of the truth, but none the whole truth. Nor indeed is the whole truth conveyed in the parable of Proteus. All that is attempted in that similitude is to bring together the scattered fragments of opinion and to mould them into something like a consistent whole. The current opinions of imagination are all fragmentary there is no wholeness about them. They rent opinions may be summed up under four heads-those which identify imagination with those memory; which melt it into passion; those which make it out to be reason; and lastly those which represent it as a faculty by itself, different from the other powers of the mind. Let us take a hasty glance at each of these sets of opinions. These cur may be examined under four heads. Most commonly imagination is described as a department of memory. So it appeared to the Greeks, in whose idea the muses were daugh |