390 ZOOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 



If, on the one hand, imagination can only exist in an organ which 

 already contains many ideas, and only originates from the habit of 

 forming complex ideas ; and if, on the other hand, it is true that the 

 more the organ of intelhgence is exercised, the more it develops, and 

 the more its faculties extend and increase, we shall perceive that 

 although all men might possess this fine faculty called imagination, 

 yet there are only very few who could have it to any high degree. 



How many men there are, even excluding those that have had no 

 education, who are forced by their condition of life to occupy themselves 

 daily during the chief part of their lives with the same kinds of ideas 

 and to carry out the same work, and who as a result are scarcely at 

 all able to vary their thoughts ! Their habitual ideas revolve in a little 

 circle which is nearly always the same and they make but few efforts 

 to enlarge it, because they have no great interest in doing so. 



Imagination is one of the finest faculties of man : it ennobles and 

 elevates his thoughts and relieves him from the domination of minute 

 details ; and when it reaches a very high development, it makes him 

 superior to the great majority of other people. 



Now genius in an individual is nothing else but a high imagination, 

 guided by exquisite taste and a well-balanced judgment, and nurtured 

 and enlightened by a vast knowledge, and controlled in short by a 

 high degree of reason. 



What would literature be without imagination ! It is useless for 

 the man of letters to be a perfect master of his language ; it is useless 

 for him to cultivate a purified diction and faultless style ; if he has no 

 imagination, he is cold, lacks thought and images, rouses no emotion 

 or interest, and all his efforts are futile. 



How could poetry, that beautiful branch of literature, and how even 

 could rhetoric dispense with imagination ? 



For myself, I hold that literature, that beautiful produce of the human 

 intellect, is the noble and subhme art of arousing our passions, elevating 

 and widening our thoughts, and transporting them out of their usual 

 routine. This art has its rules and precepts, but imagination and taste 

 are the exclusive source of its finest products. 



Since literature arouses, animates, and charms every man who is 

 able to appreciate it, science is to that extent inferior ; for she teaches 

 coldly and stiffly : but science is superior in this, that not only does 

 she serve all the arts and furnish us with the best means of providing 

 for all our physical needs, but that she also greatly broadens our 

 thoughts by showing us everywhere what is really there and not 

 what we want to find there. 



The purpose of the former is to give pleasure ; that of the latter 

 is to collect all practicable positive knowledge. 



