u 



cidatc what was obscure by a full and clear interpretation, to 

 discern whatever is equivocal or ambiguous, and point out 

 ■tli« inaccuracy to others; and which, finally, supplies you 

 with a rule to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and 

 perceive what consequences may, and what may not, be 

 fairly deduced from certain premises." 



Hitherto we have considered the sciences only as they 

 tend to strengthen the reason and correct the judgment, to 

 produce a condensation both of thought and of expression, 

 to give perspicacity in detecting error, clearness in arranging 

 the confutation of an adversary's opinion, and accuracy in 

 methodising the statement of one's own. But they are also of 

 no unimportant serv'ce to the Imagination, and will enable 

 the possessor of them, to display a vast variety of illustrations 

 and similitudes, which he cannot be censured for having bor- 

 rowed from the ancients, because they depend on ideas with 

 which they were unacquainted. "The imagination," says 

 Burke,* "is incapable of producing any thing absolutely 

 new, it can only vary the disposition of those ideas which 

 it has received from the senses;" That the imagination has 

 no creative power, properly speaking, is immediately appa- 

 rent, but that the exercise of it's combining faculty is li- 

 mited to ideas of sensation, is as erroneous as the former as- 

 sertion is incontrovertible; the imagination derives a great, 

 and at the present day, should derive much the greatest 

 supply, from reflection. We have already seen that nature, 



• Introduction to Sublime and Beautiful. 



