CHAPTER matic actions of the mind. If

sory imagination a contradiction.

any man.

any

doubt upon

VIII. this point is ever expressed, it comes from those who, like Malebranche, discover in imagination some other faculty-say memory-and then call to mind that memory is voluntary as well as inA compul- voluntary. But a compulsory imagination, a forced fancy, is a contradiction. The attempt to beget such a state of mind is unnatural, and ends ever in falsehood. The type of imaginative activity is dreaming, with which fantasy has always been identified. Indeed, Charles Lamb lays it down that the strength of imagination may be measured by the dream power in He says, that the mind's activity in sleep might furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical faculty resident in the same mind waking. But dream by night and reverie by day are not to be raised, nor yet are they to be laid, by efforts of the will. We We may coax and cozen imagination; we cannot command it. We must bide its time. The poet is born-not made; he lies in wait for the dawn, and cannot poetise at will. Bacon says truly of poetry, "that it is rather a pleasure or play of imagination, than a work or duty thereof;" but he might have said the like of all imaginative activity: it is spontaneous-it is play. In the same passage (in the Advancement of Learning), from which I have drawn the foregoing remark, he says that "imagination ever precedeth voluntary motion;" and Hobbes repeats the statement,

VIII.

observing that imagination is "the first internal CHAPTER beginner of voluntary motion." It produces volition, and by volition is not to be produced. What control of imagination lies in our power is rightly compared by Henry More with the sort of control which we can bring to bear upon the essentially involuntary act of breathing. In his Discourse on Enthusiasm he speaks of the delusions of mankind, and says that they are due "to the enormous strength and vigour of the imagination; which faculty (though it be in some sort in our power as respiration is), yet it will also work without our leave."

of imagina

its involun

tary and

character.

This sentence of More's is particularly happy The errors in tracing to their proper source the errors of tion due to imagination. The imaginations of man's heart are only evil continually, says the Scripture; im- unconscious agination is the source of all error, says Bishop Butler; it is the most dangerous foe to reason, says Hume. But Hume resolves imagination into mere memory, and other philosophers into mere reason; and is it fair to say that memory is the most dangerous foe to reason, or that reason is the source of all error? It is difficult to find out from the more common theories wherein the vice of imagination consists; and we are all the more at a loss to find it out when we know that sundry thinkers go quite in the opposite direction, and describe imagination as the faculty of clearest insight-reason in her highest mood. If imagination be identified

VIII.

CHAPTER with faculties, exact as memory, and sober as reason-where is the source of illusion? It is to be found, as More points out, in the absence of control, in the vagrancy of spontaneous movement, in the freedom from supervision. Its weakness lies in its stronghold. Because it is automatic and unconscious, it reaches to the grandest results; but also because this is its character, when it falls into error, the error is not easy of correction. It has been adopted in a blind, mechanical act of thought, and it is not to be dispelled by determined efforts of conscious reason. By its very nature, imagination is a wanderer; to it belong the thoughts "that wander through eternity." But the habit of wandering implies that it may sometimes lose itself.

If imagina

tion is

the free play of thought why is it

gination?

We are not to push the argument however nothing but further than it will go. Imagination clearly is automatic, and so far I was justified in comparing the automatic action of the mind with Aaron's called ima- rod that, becoming a serpent with a serpent's gift of fascination, swallowed and contained within itself the serpent-rods of the magicians. Still, this leaves unsettled the grand point at issue. Granting that imagination is automatic, and only automatic, may it not in kind be different from other faculties which are only at times spontaneous and unconscious? May it not be different from the hidden memory, or the hidden reason, or the hidden instincts and

VIII.

passions -the three orders of hidden power CHAPTER described in the last chapter? If imagination be not different from the other faculties of the mind-if imagination be but a name for these other faculties in their automatic, and for the most part unconscious, exercise-in a word, for the free play of thought, why is it called imagination?

the name

the defini

dwell most

The clue to the name is contained in the The clue to definition of the faculty. It is to be expected, contained in that in the free play of thought certain habits tion of the should be of more frequent recurrence than faculty. others. There is a saying, as old at least as Horace, that the mind is most vividly impressed through the eye, and it is but natural that when left to itself it should dwell most on the shows In the free of vision-images-whence arises the name of thought we imagination. According to any and every theory on images of imagination which has been propounded, the of sight. name is of less extent than the faculty, and takes a part for the whole. "Our sight," says Addison, "is the most perfect, and most delightful of all our senses. It is this sense which furnishes the imagination with its ideas, so that by the pleasures of imagination—I mean such as arise from visible objects, either when we have them actually in view, or when we call up their ideas to our mind, by paintings, statues, descriptions, or any the like occasions. We cannot, indeed, have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entrance

CHAPTER through the sight." Addison, and the writers VIII. who follow in his wake, are so far true to etymology; but no one now-a-days can suppose that they are true to the nature of imagination. We imagine sounds as well as sights; we imagine any sensation. And if it be granted that imagination contains more than its etymology conveys -is the name of a part extended to the whole, then I may turn round and say, that here is granted the principle on which my definition. proceeds. Imagination is but a name for the free play of thought, one of the most important features of which, but still only one, is its attachment and sensibility to the memories of sight.

The definition of imagination as

explains

many opinions

to it which

wise inex

It is only by supposing that imagination, although so called, must embrace the action (that free play is, of course, the spontaneous action) of the whole mind, that we can account for many of with regard the opinions which have been held in regard are other to it. I have already pointed out the inconplicable. sistency of those who tell us of the enormous influence of imagination, and yet, when they come to analyse it, reduce it to a shadow-the mere double of some other faculty; and, I trust, that the view which I have been able to present, while it will satisfy the philosophers in granting that imagination is not a faculty by itself, different in structure from the other faculties of the mind, will also satisfy those who see in it the most imperious power in the mind