Were all men equally capable of comparing ideas, of rendering them general, they would equally manifest their genius by new productions, always different from, and sometimes more perfect than those of others; all would enjoy the power of invention, or at least the talents for improvement. This, however, is far from being the case. Reduced to a servile imitation, the generality of men execute nothing but what they see done by others; they only think by memory, and in the same stile as others have thought, and their understanding being too confined for invention, they proceed to follow imitation.
Imagination is likewise a faculty of the mind. If, by _imagination_, we understand the power of comparing images with ideas; of giving colours to our thoughts; of aggrandizing our sensations; of perceiving distinctly all the remote affinities of objects; it is the most brilliant and most active faculty of the mind of which brutes are still more destitute than of understanding or memory. But there is another kind of imagination which depends solely upon the corporeal organs, and which we possess in common with brutes; it is that tumultuous emotion, excited by objects analogous or contrary to our appetites; that lively and deep impression of the images of objects, which is constantly and against our inclinations, renewed, and forces us to act without reflection; this representation of objects, which is more active than even their presence, exaggerates and falsifies every thing. This imagination is forever hostile to the human mind; it is the source of illusion, the parent of these passions, which, in defiance of the efforts of reason, bear us away, and expose us to a continual combat, in which we are almost always worsted.
The interior man is double, being composed of two principles different in their nature, and contrary in their action. The soul, that principle of all knowledge, is perpetually opposed by another purely material principle. The former is a pure light, accompanied with serenity and peace, a salutary source, whence flow science, reason, and wisdom; the latter is a false light, which never shines but in the midst of darkness and hurricane, an impetuous torrent fraught with error and passion.