the half of a woman with the half of a fish,--to imagine the union as
an existing organism,--is not really a different process from that of
combining the experience of a chemical action with an electric action,
and seeing that the two are one existing fact. When the poet hears the
storm-cloud muttering, and sees the moonlight sleeping on the bank, he
transfers his experience of human phenomena to the cloud and the
moonlight: he personifies, draws Nature within the circle of emotion,
and is called a poet. When the philosopher sees electricity in the
storm-cloud, and sees the sunlight stimulating vegetable growth, he
transfers his experience of physical phenomena to these objects, and
draws within the circle of Law phenomena which hitherto have been
unclassified. Obviously the imagination has been as active in the one
case as in the other; the DIFFERENTIA lying in the purposes of the two,
and in the general constltution of the two minds.

It has been noted that there is less strain on the imagination of the
poet; but even his greater freedom is not altogether disengaged from
the necessity of verification; his images must have at least subjective
truth; if they do not accurately correspond with objective realities,
they must correspond with our sense of congruity. No poet is allowed
the licence of creating images inconsistent with our conceptions. If he
said the moonlight burnt the bank, we should reject the image as
untrue, inconsistent with our conceptions of moonlight; whereas the
gentle repose of the moonlight on the bank readily associates itself
with images of sleep.

The often mooted question, What is Imagination? thus receives a very
clear and definite answer. It is the power of forming images; it
reinstates, in a visible group, those objects which are invisible,
either from absence or from imperfection of our senses. That is its