360 PERSONAL PREPARATION FOR RESEARCH. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



NECESSITY OF IMAGINATIVE POWER. 



THE meaning of the term imagination or conception is 

 usually limited to the formation of new ideas, but is some- 

 times applied to the formation of old ones. It is one 

 of the most complex of mental actions, and has been 

 defined as ' the faculty of the mind by which it either 

 bodies forth the forms of things unknown, or produces 

 original thoughts or new combinations of ideas from ma- 

 terials stored up in the memory.' It may also be defined 

 as the highest degree of original action of the mind 

 in a particular subject. It is often special or limited 

 in its sphere of operation, being usually confined to 

 some particular subject or art, such as that of archi- 

 tecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, eloquence, the 

 drama, the conception of mechanical and other inventions, 

 scientific explanations, hypotheses, theories, &c. ; but it is 

 only in reference to its action in scientific research that 

 the following remarks are particularly intended to apply. 



The essential characteristic of the highest imagination 

 is originality, and on this account imagination is some- 

 times called ' the creative faculty.' 



When we pass from the known to the unknown by an 

 act of imagination, w r e first conceive known ideas, and 

 then by purely mental acts compare, infer, divide, com- 

 bine, or permutate them, and in each case, from a resulting 

 new mental conception, and this is the so-called ' creative ' 

 process. The kind of mental action in such a case is pre- 

 cisely the same as when the resulting conception is not a 

 new one ; but its degree is greater because we have to 



