Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Imagination in Poetry I. The Imaginative Faculty 1. Definition. — The imagination in its essential function is defined to be the faculty of forming mental representations of sensible objects independently of the presence of the latter. We more commonly think of the imagination as representing objects that appeal to the sense of sight, but any sensation at all may be reproduced by the imagination. Thus, seated by a winter fire, I may call up the image of the beauty of summer fields; I may hear the song of birds, catch the fragrance of the breath of spring, and thus realize in myself the exultation of soul that the new life of nature suggests. Such is the re-creative power of this faculty when fully developed. The imagination may be considered from many points of view. Before considering its precise bearing on poetry, it may be helpful to note one or two distinctions that are philosophical rather than poetical. 2. Productive and Reproductive. — First: We may distinguish the productive and the reproductive imagination. The latter term is employed to designate the power of forming mental representations of objects which have been perceived before. The productive imagination is the power of putting together details so as to form an image such as has never been actually before the senses, as if I join the head and trunk of a man to the body of a horse and imagine aCentaur. It is generally admitted that the mind has no power to imagine an object absolutely new in every respect; but by assembling a variety of features borrowed from diverse objects we may construct an image that is new as a whole. Thus, one born blind can form no representation of the quality of color; whereas one familiar with objects of sight can make combinations never seen before, such as the g...