§ VII.--IMAGINATION LIMITED TO NEW RESULTS.
The simple reproduction of the _past_, whether an object or perception, or sensation, or conception merely, the simple reproduction or bringing back of that to the mind, we have assigned as the office of another faculty. Imagination, we have said, departs from the reality, and gives you not what you have had before, but something new, other, different. It is not the simple image-making power, then, for mental reproduction gives you an image or picture of any former object of perception, _as_ you have seen it--a portrait of the past, true and faithful to the original.
Some writers would differ from the view now expressed. Some of the Germans assign to imagination the double office of producing the new and reproducing the old; the latter they call imaginative reproduction. In what respect this latter differs from the faculty of mental reproduction in general, it is difficult to perceive. When I remember a word spoken, or a song, I have the conception of a _sound_, or a series of sounds. When I remember an object in nature, as a mountain, a house, etc., I have the conception of a material object, having some definite form, and figure, outline, proportion, magnitude, etc. The conception of the absent object presents itself in such a case, of course, as an image or picture of the object to the mental eye. It is as really the work of conception reproductive, however, to replace, in this case, the absent object as once perceived, as it is to bring back to mind any thing else that has once been before it; _e. g._, a spoken word or a date in history. We may, if we please, term this faculty, as employed on objects of sight, conception _imaginative_ and distinguish it from the same faculty as employed in reproducing other objects; but it were certainly better to appropriate the term imagination to the single and far higher province of creation--the office of conceiving the ideal under the form of the sensible.
§ VIII.--IMAGINATION A VOLUNTARY POWER, OR PROCESS.
Is it an act which the mind puts forth when it will, and withholds when it will? Or is it a mere passive susceptibility of the mind to be impressed in this particular way? As the harp lies passive to the wind, which comes and goes we know not how or whither, so does the mind lie open to such thoughts and fancies as flit over it and call forth its hidden harmonies as they pass by? Those who, with Dr. Brown, resolve imagination into mere suggestion, of course take the latter view.