PECULIARITY OF THE CONSTRUCTIONS OF ART. 599

aspects of the constructive mechanism not hitherto brought to light in our exposition. A fluent speaker constructing verbal combinations adapted to all the exigencies of meaning, grammar, taste, and cadence, as fast as the voice can utter them, is an object interesting to study in the present connexion. The sufficiently rapid action of the associating forces is here of prime importance. Real power is not usually identified with a specific pace of mental movement; a slow action may be as effective as a quick, but in this particular instance the ready revival of all the associations that concur in the common stream is of vital importance.

FINE ART CONSTRUCTIONS.-IMAGINATION.

23. The grand peculiarity of the case now to be considered is the presence of an emotional element in the combinations. In the constructions of science and practice a certain end is to be served the attainment of truth, or the working out of a practical result. And the mind has to choose means suitable to those ends according to the vigorous laws of nature's working. A builder has to erect a structure that will defy wind and frost, and accommodate a certain number of human beings. Nothing must enter into his plan that is not calculated to effect these purposes. The construction is considered a pure effort of intellect, because it is by intellect that we comprehend the laws and properties of stone, wood, and iron, and choose out and combine such materials as will serve for warmth and shelter. We should not properly call this operation 'imaginative,' although there is a constructive operation gone through; and that because no feeling or emotion enters in as an element excepting the one feeling of answering a practical end. Volition there is in abundance, but not emotion in the sense implied in the constructive processes of the imagin

ation.

When, however, any practical construction, such as a building, in addition to the uses of shelter and accommodation, is intended to strike the refined sensibilities that we term the feeling of the beautiful, the grand, the picturesque, a turn

must be given to the plan so as to involve this other end. Here we have emotion viewed in a certain narrow sense as exclusive of direct utility for the wants and necessities of life. There is a feeling of hunger, a feeling of cold, a feeling of fatigue, all which are emotions, but not emotions of the fine arts. The practical operations of life are engaged in consulting these strong sensibilities connected with the preservation of life itself, with present subsistence and the security of future subsistence; and no other emotion ought to interfere in the processes for attaining these fundamental ends. The builder must not let a sentimental delusion in favour of one material blind him to the insufficiency of it for resisting the tempest and the cold; this would be to let in imagination at the wrong place. But when what we look upon as practical ends,—the support of life and of healthy sensation,―are once secure, there are other feelings and sentiments belonging to human nature that can be appealed to so as to increase the sum of human happiness. These feelings are variously called the pleasures of Taste, the æsthetic sensibilities, the emotions of Fine Art; and combinations shaped with the view of gratifying them are called artistic, æsthetic, or imaginative compositions. In all such compositions an element of fine emotion is the regulating power, the all in all of the creative effort.*

*The following passage will aid us in working out the distinction between the constructions of imagination and the constructions of science and practice:

The trains of one class differ from those of another, the trains of the merchant for example, from those of the lawyer, not in this, that the ideas follow one another by any other law, in the mind of the one, and the mind of the other; they follow by the same laws exactly; and are equally composed of ideas, mixed indeed with sensations, in the minds of both. The difference consists in this, that the ideas which flow in their minds, and compose their trains, are ideas of different things. The ideas of the lawyer are ideas of the legal provisions, forms, and distinctions, and of the actions, bodily and mental, about which he is conversant. The ideas of the merchant are equally ideas of the objects and operations, about which he is concerned, and the ends towards which his actions are directed; but the objects and operations themselves are remarkably different. The trains of poets, also, do not differ from the trains of other men, but perfectly agree with them, in this, that they are composed of ideas, and that those ideas succeed one another, according to the same laws, in their, and in other minds. They are ideas, however, of very different things. The ideas of the poet are ideas

MENTAL TRAINS OF DIFFERENT CLASSES OF MEN. 601

24. In adducing examples of combinations controlled by an emotional element I shall not confine myself to the narrowest class of artistic feelings, the feelings of Taste

of all that is most lovely and striking in the visible appearance of nature, and of all that is most interesting in the actions and affections of human beings. It thus, however, appears most manifestly, that the trains of poets differ from those of other men in no other way, than those of other men differ from one another; that they differ from them by this only, that the ideas of which they are composed, are ideas of different things. There is also nothing surprising in this, that, being trains of pleasurable ideas, they should have attracted a peculiar degree of attention; and in an early age, when poetry was the only literature, should have been thought worthy of a more particular naming, than the trains of any other class. These reasons seem to account for a sort of appropriation of the name Imagination to the trains of the poet. An additional reason may be seen in another circumstance, which also affords an interesting illustration of a law of association already propounded; namely, the obscuration of the antecedent part of a train, which leads to a subsequent, more interesting than itself. In the case of the lawyer, the train leads to a decision favourable to the side which he advocates. The train has nothing pleasurable in itself. The pleasure is all derived from the end. The same is the case with the merchant. His trains are directed to a particular end. And it is the end alone which gives a value to the train. The end of the metaphysical, and the end of the mathematical inquirer, is the discovery of truth: their trains are directed to that object; and are, or are not, a source of pleasure, as that end is or is not attained. But the case is perfectly different with the poet. His train is its own end. It is all delightful, or the purpose is frustrate. From the established laws of association, this consequence unavoidably followed; that, in the case of the traius of those other classes, the interest of which was concentrated in the end, attention was withdrawn from the train by being fixed on the end; that in the case of the poet, on the other hand, the train itself being the only object, and that pleasurable, the attention was wholly fixed upon the train; that hence the train of the poet was provided with a name; that in the cases of the trains of other men, where the end only was interesting, it was thought enough that the end itself should be named, the train was neglected.

In conformity with this observation we find that wherever there is a train which leads to nothing beyond itself, and has any pretension to the character of pleasurable (the various kinds of reverie, for example), it is allowed the name of Imagination. Thus we say that Rousseau indulged his imagination, when, as he himself describes it, lying on his back, in ins boat, on the little lake of Vienne, he delivered himself up for hours to trains, of which, he says, the pleasure surpassed every other enjoyment.

* Professor Dugald Stewart has given to the word Imagination a technical meaning; without, as it appears to me, any corresponding advantage. He confines it to the cases in which the mind forms new combinations; or, as he calls them, creations; that is, to cases in which the ideas which compose the train do not come together in the same combinations in which sensations had ever been received. But this is no specific difference. This happens in every train of any considerable length, whether directed to any end, or not so directed. It is implied in every wish of the child to fly, or to jump over the house; in a large proportion of all his playful expressions,

properly so called, the fact being that even in the creations of the artist all the strong emotions may come in to swell the current of interest excepting only a few of the more exclusively animal feelings. Rage, terror, tenderness, egotism, are not æsthetic emotions, but still the artist uses them in his compositions. I should also remark that the influence of an emotion, while just and legitimate in the artistic sphere, is usually a source of corruption and bias in the combinations that have truth or practice for their end. This is only another way of saying that imagination is not to occupy the place of judgment and reason.

The emotion of Terror gives a character to all the ideas or notions formed under the influence of the feeling. A man once thoroughly terrified sees only objects of dread. It is difficult to form any combinations free of this element. Ghosts and hobgoblins fill the imagination of the superstitious, while more substantial forms of evil haunt the mind superior to the dread of the supernatural. The terrified imagination is powerful to form creations of terror, such as may prove an interesting excitement to the cool spectator, but which are also likely to vitiate the truth of any narrative of matter of fact given out under the influence of the moment. Hence the accounts that a terror-stricken and routed army relate as to the numbers and power of the enemy on its heels; hence the exaggerations that prevail in the public mind on occasions of popular panic. We see the power of an emotion not merely to give its own character to the conceptions formed on all subjects, but to induce belief in the full and exact reality of such conceptions.

With reference to examples of constructiveness of the class

as puss in boots, a hog in armour, a monkey preaching, and so on. It is manifested in perfection in every dream. It is well known that, for the discovery of truths in philosophy, there is a demand for new trains of thought, multitudes of which pass in review before the mind, are contemplated, and rejected, before the happy combination is attained, in which the discovery is involved. If imagination consists in bringing trains before the mind involving a number of new combinations, imagination is probably more the occupation of the philosopher than of the poet.-MILL'S Analysis, vol. i., p. 181.

PREDOMINANCE OF AN EMOTION.

603

now cited I may repeat the remark already made, to the effect that no new principle of association is at work in making an original combination; the only thing requisite being the presence or concurrence of the proper ingredients as furnished by the working of contiguity and similarity. When these ingredients appear in the mind together they fall into their places as a matter of course. In the present instance, and in all imaginative, or emotion-ruled combinations, the laws of association can be proved to be sufficient to furnish the constituents of the combination; for we know that each strong feeling or passion has associated with it in the mind a large number of kindred objects, in consequence of the previous frequent companionship of such objects with the feeling. The passion of terror is associated in the mind with the things that have roused the feeling in the course of each one's experience; one man has associations between it and a cruel parent or master, another with money losses, a third with attacks of illness, a fourth with defamation, a fifth with religious workings; and most men are familiar with a plurality of causes of dread. When therefore the feeling is once excited, no matter how, these often experienced adjuncts rush up and possess the mind, and mix themselves up with the other ideas of the situation so as to constitute a medley or compound of images with terror as the predominating tone. Seeing the approach of a hurried messenger with distracted countenance, the trader's mind is already full of disasters at sea or depressions of the market, the parent of a soldier is possessed of the calamities of warfare, the usurper is ready with the anticipation of a popular rising.

An exactly parallel illustration might be given from the passion of Anger. Once roused, this passion resuscitates the objects in harmony with it, and constitutes combinations wherein these enter as elements. The fanaticism of rage and hatred ascribes every diabolical impulse to the unfortunate object of the feeling; all the things that have customarily inspired anger are brought forward by contiguous association, and the instigator of the present outburst is looked on as guilty of innumerable crimes, in addition to the offence of