THE IMAGINATION OF THE HEART. 221 



open our hearts to receive new emotions; our minds, to receive 

 new ideas. Every desire expands us, and each is accompanied by 

 an imagination of the object, which limits the opening to some- 

 thing like the proper size, or constitutes its walls. And so again 

 we are presented with the fact, that imagination is depicted upon 

 the inner walls or front face of the heart. We notice in the 

 lungs the expansive correspondence of imagination, where it is 

 manifestly want (p. 131), or an elaborate vacuum produced in the 

 man by nature every moment, to incite him to new infillings. Ima- 

 gination then is the limit to which the walls stand off, the horizon 

 of present life, or the arch of the caverns of desire. It is different 

 for every cavity, according to its shape, objects, colors, &c. ; but 

 wherever there is a cavity it lives, and peoples the hollow with its 

 teeming forms. It is here to be noted, that desire and imagination 

 are one and the same thing from two points of view; the desire 

 being the hollow or void that we feel, per se, while the imagination 

 is the same regarded from the walls of the void, which imagine it full 

 of what it wants to occupy it. Thus the heart-desires dilate its 

 cavities before the blood is given them, and in the momentaneous 

 void the imagination anticipates the tide which is to come ; and the 

 heart is in every stroke prepared, both by roominess and welcome, 

 for the new life. Thus again, supply ah extra is the law of exist- 

 ence, and preparation for the supply a part of the same law. 



In the heart we notice valves, which prevent the life current from 

 running back; in the feeling heart there are states, or spiritual 

 valves, which hinder the life-loves from regurgitation. To make 

 this cleat let us use an instance. The present time has its own 

 fixed point, from which we regard the past. Manhood can only 

 look at childhood through manhood : the experience and circum- 

 stances of the latter are the present state that flies up before our eyes 

 in all attempts to reach the past : in short, we cannot go but only 

 picture backwards. If the imagination is very transparent, or not 

 greatly colored by the present, then we call it memory ; if opaque, 

 and full of existing passions, then it is merely imagination, which 

 cannot conceive anything beyond the hour. In both cases, however, 

 it is properly termed a state, a film detached from the present, which 

 is applied back against the past, and constitutes a genuine valve 



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