To Reasoning.—In like manner it differs from reasoning, which also has to do with truths, facts—has for its object to ascertain and state those facts or principles; its sole and simple inquiry being, what is true? Imagination concerns itself with no such inquiry, admits of no such limitation. Its thought is not what did actually occur, but what in given circumstances might occur. Its question is not what really was, or is, or will be, but what may be; what may be conceived as possible or probable under such or such contingencies.
Reasoning, moreover, reaches only such truths as are involved in its premises, and may fairly be deduced as conclusions from those premises. It furnishes no new material, but merely evolves and unfolds what lies wrapped up in the admitted premises. Imagination lies under no such restriction. There is no necessary connection between the wrath of Achilles, and the consequences that are made to result from it in the unfolding of the epic.
To Taste.—Imagination and taste are by no means identical. The former may exist in a high degree where the latter is essentially defective. In such a case the conceptions of the imagination are, it may be, too bold, passing the limits of probability, or, it may be, offensive to delicacy, wanting in refinement and beauty, or in some way deficient in the qualities that please a cultivated mind. This is not unfrequently the case with the productions of the poet, the painter, the orator. There is no lack of imagination in their works, while, at the same time, they strike us as deficient in taste. Taste is the regulating principle, whose office is to guide and direct the imagination, sustaining to it much the same relation that conscience does to free moral action. It is a lawgiver and a judge.
To Knowledge.—Still more widely does imagination differ from simple knowledge. There may be great learning and no imagination, and the reverse is equally true. We know that which is—the actual; we imagine that which is not—the ideal. Learning enlarges and quickens the mind, extends the field of its vision, augments its resources, expands its sphere of thought and action; in this way its powers are strengthened, its conceptions multiplied and vivified. There is furnished, consequently, both more and better material for the creative faculty to work upon. Further than this, the imagination is little indebted to learning.
Illustration of these Differences.—To illustrate the differences already indicated: I stand at my window and look out on the landscape. My eye rests on the form and dark outline of a mountain, pictured against the sky. Perception, this. I go back to my desk, I shut my eyes. That form and figure, pencilled darkly against the blue sky, are still in my mind. I seem to see them still. That heavy mass, that undulating outline, that bold rugged summit—the whole stands before me as distinctly as when my eye rested upon it. Conception, this, replacing the absent object. I not only in my thoughts seem to see the mountain thus reproduced, but I know it when seen; I recognize it as the mountain which a moment before I saw from my window. Memory, this, connecting the conception with something in my past experience. The picture fades perhaps from my view, and I begin to estimate the probable distance of the mountain, or its relative height, as compared with other mountains. Judgment, this, or the conception of relations. I proceed to calculate the number of square miles of surface on a mountain of that height and extent. Reasoning, this. And now I sweep away, in thought, the actual mountain, and replace it with one vastly more imposing and grand. Eternal snows rest upon its summits; glaciers hold their slow and stately march down its sides; the avalanche thunders from its precipices. Imagination now has the field to herself.
§ III.—Active and Passive Imagination.
View of Dr. Wayland.—"If we regard the several act of this faculty," says Dr. Wayland, "we may, I think, observe a difference between them. We have the power to originate images or pictures for ourselves, and we have the power to form them as they are presented in language. The former may be called active, and the latter passive imagination. The active, I believe, always includes the passive power, but the passive does not always include the active. Thus we frequently observe persons who delight in poetry and romance, who are utterly incapable of creating a scene or composing a stanza. They can form the pictures dictated by language, but are destitute of the power of original combination."
Correctness of this View questioned.—That many who enjoy the creations of the poet and the splendid fictions of the dramatist and novelist, are themselves incapable of producing like creations, is doubtless true. The same is true in other departments of the creative art. Many persons enjoy a fine painting or statue, good music, or a noble architectural design, who cannot themselves produce these works of art. This does not prove them deficient, however, in imagination, for the inability may be owing to other causes, as want of training; nor, on the other hand, does the simple enjoyment of ideal creations involve a different kind of imagination from that exercised in creating. Imagination is, as it seems to me, always active, never passive. Where it exists, and whenever it is called into exercise, it acts, and its action is, in some sense, creative. It conceives the ideal, that which, as conceived, does not exist, or at least is not known to the senses as existing. It matters not in what way these ideal conceptions are suggested, whether by the signs of language written or spoken, or by those characters which the painter, the sculptor, or the architect presents, each in his own way, and with his own material, or by one's own previous conceptions. Every ideal conception is suggested by something antecedent to itself. All active imagination is, in other words, passive, in the sense here intended, and all passive imagination, so called, is in reality active, so far as it is, properly speaking, imagination at all. The difference between the faculty that produces and that which merely enjoys, is a difference of degree rather than of kind. The one is an imagination peculiarly active; the other slightly so; or, more properly, the one mind has much, the other little imagination.