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 under
Sense and the routine of habitual inferences. They are unable to free
themselves from the importunities of the apparent facts and apparent
relations which solicit their attention; and when they make room for
unapparent facts it is only for those which are familiar to their
minds. Hence they can see little more than what they have been taught
to see; they can only think what they have been taught to think. For
independent vision, and original conception, we must go to children and
men of genius. The spontaneity of the one is the power of the other.
Ordinary men live among marvels and feel no wonder, grow familiar with
objects and learn nothing new about them. Then comes an independent
mind which sees; and it surprises us to find how servile we have been