IMA OnVA TION. 459 



Here I would repeat with emphasis, what I intimated in the 

 beginning, that the microscopic eye which peers too long and too 

 intently upon the motes of facts which play in the sunbeam, will be 

 blinded to the force and beauty of the truths which both the motes 

 and the beam conspire to announce. 



In thus insisting upon the intimate relationships which I believe 

 subsist between the offices of the imaginative and those of the reason- 

 ing faculty, I must not be misunderstood to depreciate or disparage 

 the mighty prowess of the latter, which I love to contemplate. Pure 

 reason, as expressed I had nearly said symbolized in the simple, 

 faultless syllogism, has nothing to fear from the sovereignty of the 

 imagination. It is beautiful and fearful to see that clear, cold, naked 

 blade, gleaming with steel-blue temper, resistlessly incisive to see 

 it cleave with equal ease the solid ingot of ignorance and the gossa- 

 mer web of illusion to see it w^ork like a giant steam-hammer, 

 smoothly, noiselessly, and irresistibly, whether its power be adjusted 

 to the cracking of an egg-shell of superfine subtilties, or the forging 

 of the massive links by which it is anchored secure in a storm of 

 error. Yet this Titan is not omnipotent ; its powers are limited; and 

 it is precisely at the point w^here reason hesitates that the ofiice of 

 imagination begins. The higher faculty takes up the story when 

 reason omits to point the moral, and adorns the tale that Nature tells 

 to man. It brings her seeming discords into one grand harmony, 

 and crowns the noble shaft of Science with the immortal wreath of 

 Art. 



I speak of imagination in its full development, and in the truest, 

 highest, and best sense that the term can bear; and I am reminded 

 here to draw a broad, even if a devious and uncertain, line of dis- 

 tinction between this splendid faculty and mere Fancy a pert Miss, 

 whose wills-o'-the-wisp are too often mistaken for the head-light of the 

 imagination. I will not weary you with over-nice formalities of defi- 

 nition in a case where shades of difierence blend. Know, by their 

 fruits, that fancy is a parody on imagination. The play of fancy is 

 quips and quirks and airy nothings, and the whole mob of littlenesses 

 we call smart and clever. The working of imagination breathes life 

 into marble and canvas, inspires the drama, the poem, the symphony, 

 and vivifies systems of religion. 



What faculty but the imaginative can conceive, what but the 

 power of the imagination itself can convey, the full meaning of this 

 soul of genius? It is creative; and, when this is said, expression 

 falters by the wayside of anticlimax. If there be within us one single 

 spark of the divine fire, this spark it is that sends " the long light 

 shaking" from pillar to pillar of the temple that the lesser god of the 

 imasfination rears to a God eternal, till it irradiates the shrine where 

 all men sooner or later must kneel in devotion ; and we, who now 

 gaze wistfully at the veil which screens the inner sanctuary from eyes 



