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obscure part. It produces no work, like the intellect and 

 the imagination, nor does it perform any brilliant actions 

 like the will. It does not give material evidence of itself, 

 like a defect of the senses. It does not come under the ken 

 of the law, like the passions ; nor does it enter the domain 

 of medicine, like mental disease. Since, then, it is so little 

 tangible, the lack of evidences need not surprise us ; and 

 there is still reason to hope that, in proportion as the sub- 

 ject of mental heredity, hitherto much overlooked, is better 

 studied, attention will be directed to this matter, and will 

 abundantly show that here, as elsewhere, heredity is the 

 rule." 



Chiefly concerning fictitious instead of real objects, the 

 Imaginative faculty may be said to differ in its character in 

 some respects from that of Reason ; yet in both the same 

 powers are exercised, though in a different manner. The 

 Imagination, then, depends upon the intellectual powers for 

 all its higher operations, and is usually recognised to be of 

 a twofold character viz., reproductive and creative, both of 

 which are hereditarily transmissible. Perception and 

 imagination being correlated so intimately, we can readily 

 understand the transmissibility of the latter ; and besides 

 the first and instinct, imagination, as a faculty of the mind, 

 is more commonly transmitted than any other. We are here 

 more intimately concerned with the creative or active form 

 of imagination " the imagination which creates and 

 interprets an ideal conception by means of sensible forms " 

 in a word, the imagination of poets, painters, musicians, 

 and scientists. Of the four subjects just mentioned, whilst 

 the imagination of all is emphatically hereditary, the 

 families of poets are, perhaps, more comparatively rare, and 

 this is scarcely to be wondered at when we remember that 



