WILLIAM G. STEVENSON. 63 
ing beyond the bounds of sensory perception—gathers 
from the infinitudes of unrevealed realities new truths, 
and thereby ‘‘ gives to airy nothing, a local habitation 
and a name.’ Itis thus that the intellect is able to 
extend the horizon of knowledge, and obtain material 
for the workshops of the brain. 
Imagination is the prolific mother of art, of poetry, 
and song; its breath transforms dull canvas intoa thing 
of beauty, and gives to marble the expressive forms of 
life. The drama, the poem, the symphony are the grand 
chorus of itsinspiration. Thedomination of law through- 
out the universe, and the unity of nature under it, are 
its revelations, while the hypotheses of science and the 
postulates of philosophy are but its temporary vestures. 
Imagination, however bold may be its flight, is, never- 
theless, under the restraining influence of reason, and 
performs its wondrous work along true parallels of 
thought. Its ideals are not mere symbols of myths and 
fleeting shadows, but ideals which are the embodiments 
of eternal truths. Thus, by its sovereignty in realms 
where Ariadne’s thread is lost from view, the imagina- 
tion constructs its empire, and gives by its own methods 
new revelations of truth, thereby ‘* convertingall nature 
into the rhetoric of thought.”’ 
This, then, is the special mind-quality—the ‘‘ vision 
and the faculty divine’’—which constitutes the power 
of genius. 
Notwithstanding its high endowments, genius is not 
so puissant that it cannot be ‘‘ improved by culture, di- 
rected by knowledge or disciplined by reason’’; nor so 
transcendent that it ‘‘knows without learning, and 
teaches the world what it never learned.’? To say with 
Mr. Stedman that ‘‘ genius lies in the doing of one 
thing, or many things, through power resulting from 
the unconscious action of the free intellect in a manner 
unattainable by the conscious effort of ordinary men ”’ is 
