SECTION II.

Brutes possess imagination as well as ourselves; your dog, for example, hunts in his dreams. "Objects are painted in the fancy," says Descartes, as others have also said. Certainly they are; but what is the fancy, and how are objects painted in it? Is it with "the subtle matter"? "How can I tell" is the appropriate answer to all questions thus affecting the first principles of human organization.

Nothing enters the understanding without an image. It was necessary, in order to our obtaining the confused idea we possess of infinite space, that we should have an idea of a space of a few feet. It is necessary, in order to our having the idea of God, that the image of something more powerful than ourselves should have long dwelt upon our minds.

We do not create a single idea or image. I defy you to create one. Ariosto did not make Astolpho travel to the moon till long after he had heard of the moon, of St. John, and of the Paladins.

We make no images; we only collect and combine them. The extravagances of the "Thousand and One Nights" and the "Fairy Tales" are merely combinations. He who comprises most images in the storehouse of his memory is the person who possesses most imagination.

The difficulty is in not bringing together these images in profusion, without any selection. You might employ a whole day in representing, without any toilsome effort, and almost without any attention, a fine old man with a long beard, clothed in ample drapery, and borne in the midst of a cloud resting on chubby children with beautiful wings attached to their shoulders, or upon an eagle of immense size and grandeur; all the gods and animals surrounding him; golden tripods running to arrive at his council; wheels revolving by their own self-motion, advancing as they revolve; having four faces covered with eyes, ears, tongues, and noses; and between these tripods and wheels an immense multitude of dead resuscitated by the crash of thunder; the celestial spheres dancing and joining in harmonious concert, etc. The lunatic asylum abounds in such imaginations.

We may, in dealing with the subject of imagination distinguish:

1. The imagination which disposes of the events of a poem, romance, tragedy, or comedy, and which attaches the characters and passions to the different personages. This requires the profoundest judgment and the most exquisite knowledge of the human heart; talents absolutely indispensable; but with which, however, nothing has yet been done but merely laying the foundation of the edifice.

2. The imagination which gives to all these personages the eloquence or diction appropriate to their rank, suitable to their station. Here is the great art and difficulty; but even after doing this they have not done enough.

3. The imagination in the expression, by which every word paints an image in the mind without astonishing or overwhelming it; as in Virgil:

.... Remigium alarum.--ÆNEID, vi, 19.

Mærentem abjungens fraterna morte juvencum. --GEORGICS, iii, 517.

.... Velorum pandimus alas.--ÆNEID, iii, 520.

Pendent circum oscula nati.--GEORGICS, ii, 523.

Immortale jecur tundens fecundaque pœnis Viscera.--ÆNEID, vi, 598-599.

Et caligantem nigra formidine lucum. --GEORGICS, iv, 468.

Fata vocant, conditque natantia lumina somnus. --GEORGICS, iv, 496.

Virgil is full of these picturesque expressions, with which he enriches the Latin language, and which are so difficult to be translated into our European jargons--the crooked and lame offspring of a well-formed and majestic sire, but which, however, have some merit of their own, and have done some tolerably good things in their way.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics. An inventor must begin with painting correctly in his mind the figure, the machine invented by him, and its properties or effects. We repeat there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.

As the imagination of a great mathematician must possess extreme precision, so must that of a great poet be exceedingly correct and chaste. He must never present images that are incompatible with each other, incoherent, highly exaggerated, or unsuitable to the nature of the subject.

The great fault of some writers who have appeared since the age of Louis XIV. is attempting a constant display of imagination, and fatiguing the reader by the profuse abundance of far-fetched images and double rhymes, one-half of which may be pronounced absolutely useless. It is this which at length brought into neglect and obscurity a number of small poems, such as "Ver Vert," "The Chartreuse," and "The Shades," which at one period possessed considerable celebrity. Mere sounding superfluity soon finds oblivion.

Omne supervacuum pleno depectore manat. --HORACE, Art of Poetry, 837.

The active and the passive imagination have been distinguished in the "Encyclopædia." The active is that of which we have treated. It is the talent of forming new pictures out of all those contained in our memory.

The passive is scarcely anything beyond memory itself, even in a brain under strong emotion. A man of an active and fervid imagination, a preacher of the League in France, or a Puritan in England, harangues the populace with a voice of thunder, with an eye of fire, and the gesture of a demoniac, and represents Jesus Christ as demanding justice of the Eternal Father for the new wounds he has received from the royalists, for the nails which have been driven for the second time through his feet and hands by these impious miscreants. Avenge, O God the Father, avenge the blood of God the Son; march under the banner of the Holy Spirit; it was formerly a dove, but is now an eagle bearing thunder! The passive imaginations, roused and stimulated by these images, by the voice, by the action of those sanguinary empirics, urge the maddened hearers to rush with fury from the chapel or meeting house, to kill their opponents and get themselves hanged.

Persons of passive imaginations, for the sake of high and violent excitement, go sometimes to the sermon and sometimes to the play; sometimes to the place of execution; and sometimes even to what they suppose to be the midnight and appalling meetings of presumed sorcerers.

IMPIOUS.

Who is the impious man? It is he who exhibits the Being of Beings, the great former of the world, the eternal intelligence by whom all nature is governed, with a long white beard, and having hands and feet. However, he is pardonable for his impiety--a weak and ignorant creature, the sight or conduct of whom we ought not to allow to provoke or to vex us.

If he should even paint that great and incomprehensible Being as carried on a cloud, which can carry nothing; if he is so stupid as to place God in a mist, in rain, or on a mountain, and to surround him with little round, chubby, painted faces, accompanied by two wings, I can smile and pardon him with all my heart.

The impious man, who ascribes to the Being of Beings absurd predictions and absolute iniquities, would certainly provoke me, if that Great Being had not bestowed upon me the gift of reason to control my anger. This senseless fanatic repeats to me once more what thousands of others have said before him, that it is not our province to decide what is reasonable and just in the Great Being; that His reason is not like our reason, nor His justice like our justice. What then, my rather too absurd and zealous friend, would you really wish me to judge of justice and reason by any other notions than I have of them myself? Would you have me walk otherwise than with my feet, or speak otherwise than with my mouth?

The impious man, who supposes the Great Being to be jealous, proud, malignant, and vindictive, is more dangerous. I would not sleep under the same roof with such a man.

But how will you treat the impious man, the daring blasphemer, who says to you: "See only with my eyes; do not think for yourself; I proclaim to you a tyrant God, who ordained me to be your tyrant; I am His well-beloved; He will torment to all eternity millions of His creatures, whom He detests, for the sake of gratifying me; I will be your master in this world and will laugh at your torments in the next!"

Do you not feel a very strong inclination to beat this cruel blasphemer? And, even if you happen to be born with a meek and forgiving spirit, would you not fly with the utmost speed to the West, when this barbarian utters his atrocious reveries in the East?

With respect to another and very different class of the impious--those who, while washing their elbows, neglect to turn their faces towards Aleppo and Erivan, or who do not kneel down in the dirt on seeing a procession of capuchin friars at Perpignan, they are certainly culpable; but I hardly think they ought to be impaled.

IMPOST.