her head she bowed_
Stooping through a fleecy cloud."

It is evident that Stewart's explanation utterly fails in all these
instances, for there is in them no "combination" whatsoever, but a
particular mode of regarding the qualities or appearances of a single
thing, illustrated and conveyed to us by the image of another; and the
act of imagination, observe, is not the selection of this image, but the
mode of regarding the object.

But the metaphysician's definition fails yet more utterly, when we look
at the imagination neither as regarding, nor combining, but as
penetrating.

"My gracious Silence, Hail:
Wouldst thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home
That weep'st to see me triumph. Ah! my dear,
Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,
And mothers that lack sons."

How did Shakspeare _know_ that Virgilia could not speak?

This knowledge, this intuitive and penetrative perception, is still one
of the forms, the highest, of imagination, but there is no combination
of images here.

Sec. 6. The three operations of the imagination. Penetrative, associative,
contemplative.

We find, then, that the imagination has three totally distinct
functions. It combines, and by combination creates new forms; but the
secret principle of this combination has not been shown by the analysts.
Again, it treats or regards both the simple images and its own
combinations in peculiar ways; and, thirdly, it penetrates, analyzes,
and reaches truths by no other faculty discoverable. These its three
functions, I shall endeavor to illustrate, but not in this order: the
most logical mode of treatment would be to follow the order in which
commonly the mind works; that is, penetrating first, combining next, and
treating or regarding, finally; but this arrangement would be
inconvenient, because the acts of penetration and of regard are so
closely connected, and so like in their relations to other mental acts,
that I wish to examine them consecutively, and the rather, because they
have to do with higher subject matter than the mere act of combination,
whose distinctive nature, that property which makes it imagination and
not composition, it will I think be best to explain at setting out, as
we easily may, in subjects familiar and material. I shall therefore
examine the imaginative faculty in these three forms; first, as
combining or associative