To the forensic
reasoner, to the practical master-worker in whatever sphere, such a
power is essential not less than to the ideal artist or to the weaver
of fictions. Imagination is thus the abstract action, that is, the
most intense action, of the intellect.
When I run over in my mind, and in the order of their service, the
first seven presidents of the United States, Washington, Adams,
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, I exert only memory. The
moment I begin to compare or contrast one with another, or to give the
character of any of them, I put into play the higher, the imaginative
action; for, to draw an historical character, the facts collected by
memory must be shaped and colored and organized, the details
gathered must be combined into a whole by the intellect, which being a
mere tool, the success of the result (the tool being of a temper to do
the work laid on it) will depend on the quality of the powers that
handle it, that is, on the writer's gifts of sympathy.
The degree and fullness wherewith the imaginative power shall be
called upon depending thus on faculties of feeling, thence it is that
the word _imagination_ has come to be appropriated to the highest
exercise of the power, that, namely, which is accomplished by those
few who, having more than usual emotive capacity in combination with
sensibility to the beautiful, are hereby stimulated to mold and shape
into fresh forms the stores gathered by perception and memory, or the
material originated within the mind through its creative fruitfulness.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43