active, busy, diligent, employed, industrious, occupied, working.
ill-informed, unenlightened, unlearned, untaught, illiterate, uninformed, unlettered, untutored. uneducated, uninstructed, unskilled,
_Ignorant_ signifies destitute of education or knowledge, or lacking knowledge or information; it is thus a relative term. The most learned man is still _ignorant_ of many things; persons are spoken of as _ignorant_ who have not the knowledge that has become generally diffused in the world; the _ignorant_ savage may be well instructed in matters of the field and the chase, and is thus more properly _untutored_ than _ignorant_. _Illiterate_ is without letters and the knowledge that comes through reading. _Unlettered_ is similar in meaning to _illiterate_, but less absolute; the _unlettered_ man may have acquired the art of reading and writing and some elementary knowledge; the _uneducated_ man has never taken any systematic course of mental training. _Ignorance_ is relative; _illiteracy_ is absolute; we have statistics of _illiteracy_; no statistics of _ignorance_ are possible.
educated, learned, sage, skilled, trained, well-informed, wise. instructed,
The old psychology treated of the _Reproductive Imagination_, which simply reproduces the images that the mind has in any way acquired, and the _Productive Imagination_ which modifies and combines mental images so as to produce what is virtually new. To this _Reproductive Imagination_ President Noah Porter and others have given the name of _phantasy_ or _fantasy_ (many psychologists preferring the former spelling). _Phantasy_ or _fantasy_, so understood, presents numerous and varied images, often combining them into new forms with exceeding vividness, yet without any true constructive power, but with the mind adrift, blindly and passively following the laws of association, and with reason and will in torpor; the mental images being perhaps as varied and as vivid, but also as purposeless and unsystematized as the visual images in a kaleidoscope; such _fantasy_ (often loosely called _imagination_) appears in dreaming, reverie, somnambulism, and intoxication. _Fantasy_ in ordinary usage simply denotes capricious or erratic _fancy_, as appears in the adjective _fantastic_. _Imagination_ and _fancy_ differ from _fantasy_ in bringing the images and their combinations under the control of the will; _imagination_ is the broader and higher term, including _fancy_; _imagination_ is the act or power of imaging or of reimaging objects of perception or thought, of combining the products of knowledge in modified, new, or ideal forms--the creative or constructive power of the mind; while _fancy_ is the act or power of forming pleasing, graceful, whimsical, or odd mental images, or of combining them with little regard to rational processes of construction; _imagination_ in its lower form. Both _fancy_ and _imagination_ recombine and modify mental images; either may work with the other's materials; _imagination_ may glorify the tiniest flower; _fancy_ may play around a mountain or a star; the one great distinction between them is that _fancy_ is superficial, while _imagination_ is deep, essential, spiritual. Wordsworth, who was the first clearly to draw the distinction between the _fancy_ and the _imagination_, states it as follows: