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harmonious whole the mind’s fragmentary conceptions. Further, tt 
is to create out of simple elements a new existence, which, when created, 
shall be essentially veal and true. And, yet further still—it is to do 
all this with emotion, and with the conscious purpose of giving 
pleasure—asthetic pleasure arising from a sense of beauty. The 
imagination, therefore, takes what has been accumulated ; and 
then selects, rejects, controls, arranges, harmonizes ; and, finally, 
creates. Although the power of the imagination is seen as much 
in what it refuses as in what it accepts, its domain is one of 
synthesis rather than analysis. Its action, it may be added, is 
intimately connected with that of sympathy. The imaginative 
artist has the power of going out of himself, both emotionally and 
intellectually ; and this is probably the reason why works of the 
highest art are seldom produced except under conditions which 
afford sympathy towards the artist. That which he gives he 
asks for in return. 
One of the finest symbols of the imaginative process, as I 
understand it, is given us in the Mosaic story of the Creation :— 
«“ And God said, let us make man in our image, after our like- 
ness. . . . And the Lord God formed man of the dust of 
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
man became a living soul.” Here is the express work of the | 
imagination. The Supreme is set before us as a maker—the 
ancient name given to the poet. Something is made, and it is 
made in an image. The image is that of the Maker himself— 
exactly the process of art. The thing made is out of the dust of 
the earth. This represents to us the humble material—nature, 
which is the true basis of the artist’s work. Finally, the Maker’s 
own breath of life is needed before we can have a living soul, 
precisely what occurs in art: it is the artist’s own life, and that 
only which can ever make his work to live. The magnificent 
eulogy which Shakspere pronounced upon that first creation is 
pretty much what we have to say over the greatest works of art: 
“« What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how 
infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admir- 
able! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like 
a god.” 
Such, I believe, is the Imagination when rightly defined ; 
and its office in painting is entirely the same as in literature. 
When the poem or the painting fails, it is usually because the 
artist has lacked this faculty, and consequently has been unable 
to see at one time both the individual and the general—unable to 
keep his mind grasping the whole while he laboured upon a part. 
It will be seen, therefore, that in our judgment the imagination 
is not merely, as is often supposed, an idle or vagrant function 
of the mind, fluttering aimlessly from thought to thought, or 
dealing only with fantastic unrealities ; but rather that it is, on 
