ine---to form an image--we must have the
numerous relations of things present to the mind, and see the objects
in their actual order. In this we are of course greatly aided by the
mass of organised experience, which allows us rapidly to estimate the
relations of gravity or affinity just as we remember that fire burns
and that heated bodies expand. But be the aid great or small, and the
result victorious or disastrous, the imaginative process is always the
same.

There is a slighter strain on the imagination of the poet, because of
his greater freedom. He is not, like the philosopher, limited to the
things which are, or were. His vision includes things which might be,
and things which never were. The philosopher is not entitled to assume
that Nature sympathises with man; he must prove the fact to be so if he
intend making any use of it ;--we admit no deductions from unproved
assumptions. But the poet is at perfect liberty to assume this; and
having done so, he paints what would be the manifestations of this
sympathy. The naturalist who should describe a hippogriff would incur
the laughing scorn of Europe; but the poet feigns its existence, and
all Europe is delighted when it rises with Astolfo in the air. We never
pause to ask the poet whether such an animal exists. He has seen it,
and we see it with his eyes. Talking trees do not startle us in Virgil
and Tennyson. Puck and Titania, Hamlet and Falstaff, are as true for us
as Luther and Napoleon so long as we are in the realm of Art. We grant
the poet a free privilege because he will use it only for our pleasure.
In Science pleasure is not an object, and we give no licence.

Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination.
Where Sense observes two isolated objects, Imagination discloses two
related objects. This relation is the nexus visible. We had not seen it
before; it is apparent now. Where we should only see a calamity the
poet makes us see a tragedy. Where we could only see a sunrise he
enables us to see

"Day like a mighty river flowing in."

Imagination is not the exclusive appanage of artists, but belongs in
varying degrees to all men. It is simply the power of forming images.
Supplying the energy of Sense where Sense cannot reach, it brings into
distinctness the facts, obscure or occult, which are grouped round an
object or an idea, but which are not actually present to Sense. Thus,
at the aspect of a windmill, the mind forms images of ma