Heredity of the Imagination. 55 



between perception and imagination ; that the latter, in its passive 

 form, depends entirely on the nervous system and the organs, and 

 in its active form is closely connected with them ; and that, conse- 

 quently, psychological heredity implies mental heredity. 



Passive imagination is the property by which our sensorial im- 

 pressions tend to reproduce themselves, though in less vivid shape, 

 in the absence of their object. In its highest degree it becomes 

 hallucination, which makes our internal states objective, and 

 presents them to us as external realities; and this gives ground 

 for believing that passive imagination is, in its mechanism, a 

 reversed perception perception proceeding from without inwards, 

 imagination from within outwards. The part played by imagin- 

 ation in insanity, sleep, drunkenness, hallucination, ecstasy, and 

 various states called miraculous, has been profoundly studied in 

 our time, in wo'rks on mental diseases. In these works are many 

 important facts in the study of heredity. We propose to discuss 

 these hereafter, and bring under one head all the phenomena of 

 morbid heredity. 



At present we deal only with active imagination the imagin- 

 ation of the poet, the artist, and even of the man of science ; the 

 imagination which creates and interprets an ideal conception by 

 means of sensible forms. It is a complex faculty, presupposing, 

 at least, taste and sentiment; yet, at bottom, it differs less than 

 might be supposed from passive imagination ; nor is common 

 parlance at fault when it confounds the two under one name. 

 The essential characteristic of both is vivid representation, intense 

 vision. 1 Hence it is that great artists have ever come so near to 

 hallucination and madness, and hence many of them have over- 

 stepped the limits of sanity. 



The history of art shows that creative imagination is transmissible 

 by heredity. We often find families of poets, musicians, painters. 

 Families of poets are, it would seem, more rare ; nor is the reason 

 hard to find. No one can be a musician without an exquisite 



1 At the close of a conversation about family affairs, Balzac said to Jules 

 Sandeau, ' Now let us come to reality ' meaning his novels. G. Flaubert, 

 while describing the poisoning of one of his heroines, felt, as he himself says, 

 all the symptoms of poisoning the taste of arsenic, indigestion, and vomiting. 

 Taine, L ' Intelligence^ i. p. 94. 



