er divine; and
yet wonderful as it may seem, it is palpably evident that no less an
operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for, by the
definition of unity of membership, (the essential characteristic of
greatness,) not only certain couples or groups of parts, but _all_ the
parts of a noble work must be separately imperfect; each must imply, and
ask for all the rest, and the glory of every one of them must consist in
its relation to the rest, neither while so much as one is wanting can
any be right. And it is evidently impossible to conceive in each
separate feature, a certain want or wrongness which can only be
corrected by the other features of the picture, (not by one or two
merely, but by all,) unless together with the want, we conceive also of
what is wanted, that is of all the rest of the work or picture. Hence
Fuseli:--

"Second thoughts are admissible in painting and poetry only as dressers
of the first conception; no great idea was ever formed in fragments."

"He alone can conceive and compose who sees the whole at once before
him."

Sec. 10. Its limits.

There is, however, a limit to the power of all human imagination. When
the relations to be observed are absolutely necessary, and highly
complicated, the mind cannot grasp them, and the result is a total
deprivation of all power of imagination associative in such matter. For
this reason, no human mind has ever conceived a new animal. For as it is
evident that in an animal, every part implies all the rest; that is, the
form of the eye involves the form of the brow and nose, these the form
of the forehead and lip, these of the head and chin, and so on, so that
it is physically impossible to conceive of any one of these members,
unless we conceive the relation it bears to the whole animal; and as
this relation is necessary, certain, and complicated, allowing of no
license or inaccuracy, the intellect utterly fails under the load, and
is reduced to mere composition, putting the bird's wing on men's
shoulders, or half the human body to half the horse's, in doing which
there is no action of imagination, but only of fancy; though in the
treatment and contemplation of the compound form there may be much
imagination, as we shall presently see. (Chap. III. Sec. 30.)

Sec. 11. How manifested in treatment of uncertain relations. Its deficiency
illustrated.

The matter, therefore, in which associative imagination can be shown is
tha