456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the materials of which they are coinjDOsed, The architect, not his 

 workmen the plan, not the details of its execution the design, not 

 the methods of its accomplishment these are within the higher view 

 to which intellectual insight may aspire. Let us pay tribute to the 

 gifted poet who taught us to contrast the insigniiicance of a fact with 

 the sublime signification of a truth. No one may imagine for a 

 moment that the imaginative faculty is an imaginary thing, or doubt 

 the reality of imagination, because it is immaterial and immeasurable, 

 inscrutable to the physical senses, unsusceptible of analysis or sjn- 

 thesis, triable by no test, overriding logic, outwitting piiilosophy, 

 laughing at science this imperious mistress of mind, tliis fertile 

 mother of all art ! 



This, that, and the other, of things unnumbered, material and 

 immaterial, wise and otherwise, make up the marvelous microcosm 

 we call Self the world where, like the sun of the planetary system, 

 shines the intellect with j)erfect splendor. But, as the spectrum has 

 dissected the solar ray, so has the understanding, by a process of self- 

 inflicted vivisection that seems scarcely less than divine in its insight, 

 pierced and resolved the mysteries of its own composition. We 

 know that the mind is a bundle of many fagots, the united strength 

 of which can never be broken, though racked on doubt and 'put to the 

 wheel of despair though cast beneath the car of superstition, or 

 consigned to the nether millstone of inhuman persecution. We know 

 that these mental fagots are of many kinds sturdy oak of the 

 scientist, pliable ash of the schoolman, sail-bearing pine of the posi- 

 tivist, cypress of pessimist, rose-wood of optimist, heart-wood, it may 

 be, for all of us ; and the one mysterious piece, so like and yet so 

 unlike them all. Let the rest season, nay, even blacken : this one is 

 changeless and ever-enduring, as fresh and as green as if cut but 

 to-day from the parent stem ; it buds on forever, like a wonderful air- 

 plant whose tendrils find nourishment wherever there is sensitized 

 atmosphere, and needs the grosser nurture of no vulgar mould ; this 

 veritable Hamamelis, witch-hazel of the mental sheaf, fitly styled the 

 *' divining-rod ; " for this is the magic wand of the sculptor, the 

 painter, the poet, the singer, the seer alike ! 



Technical definition of the imagination may be found in the dic- 

 tionaries of all civilized languages those monuments of learning and 

 labor which compel the most profound respect, while they excite the 

 liveliest emotions of gratitude and sympathy for the men who were 

 born to erect them. But the conventional label of the imaginative 

 faculty need not be recited before this Society ; nor need I enlarge 

 upon its manifest inadequacy beyond the requirements of formalism. 

 Definition is, or should be, diagnostic description ; but in what terms 

 may that be described which exists only in imagination ? Definition 

 implies limitation and boundary ; the gist of the term is the setting 

 of corner-stones ; but how measure off and survey that which is 



