es of the mind.

In complex trains of thought signs are indispensable. The images, when
called up, are only vanishing suggestions: they disappear before they
are more than half formed. And yet it is because signs are thus
substituted for images (paper transacting the business of money) that
we are so easily imposed upon by verbal fallacies and meaningless
phrases. A scientific man of some eminence was once taken in by a wag,
who gravely asked him whether he had read Bunsen's paper on the
MALLEABILITY of light. He confessed that he had not read it: "Bunsen
sent it to me, but I've not had time to look into it."

The degree in which each mind habitually substitutes signs for images
will be, CETERIS PARIBUS, the degree in which it is liable to error.
This is not contradicted by the fact that mathematical, astronomical,
and physical reasonings may, when complex, be carried on more
suecessfully by the employment of signs; because in these cases the
signs themselves accurately represent the abstractness of the
relations. Such sciences deal only with relations, and not with
objects; hence greater simplification ensures greater accuracy. But no
sooner do we quit this sphere of abstractions to enter that of concrete
things, than the use of symbols becomes a source of weakness. Vigorous
and effective minds habitually deal with concrete images. This is
notably the case with poets and great literates. Their vision is keener
than that of other men. However rapid and remote their flight of
thought, it is a succession of images, not of abstractions. The details
which give significance, and which by us are seen vaguely as through a
vanishing mist, are by them seen in sharp outlines. The image which to
us is a mere suggestion, is to them almost as vivid as the object. And
it is because they see vividly that they can paint effectively.

Most readers will recognise this to be true of poets, but will doubt
its application to philosophers, because imperfect psychology and
unscientific criticism have disguised the identity of intellectual
processes until it has become a paradox to say that imagination is not
less indispensable to the philosopher than to the poet. The paradox
falls directly we restate the proposition thus: both poet and
philosopher draw their power from the energy of their mental vision--an
energy which disengages the mind from the somnolence of habit and from
the pressure of obtrusive sensations. In general men are passive