IMAGINATION OR FANCY 127. In the use which Mr. Stewart makes of the term imagination, it in cludes the fancy, and is in no respect a distinct power, as he himself states, but compounded of several others. "It in cludes," he says, " conception or simple apprehension, which enables us to form a notion of those former objects of per ception or of knowledge, out of which we are to make a selection ; abstraction, which separates the selected materials front the qualities and circumstances which are connected with them in na ture; and judgment or taste, which selects the materials and directs their combination. To these powers we may add that peculiar habit of association to which 1 formerly gave the name of fancy; as it is this which presents to our choice all the diffrrent materials which are sub servient to the efforts of imagination." "'This," he observes in another place, "is the proper sense of the word, if imagination be the power which gives birth to the productions of the poet and the painter," and, we may add, of genius in general.—We have no objection to such an appropriation of the term ; in the Hartleyan nomenclature, however, it is used indiscriminately in the sense in which the professor seems to employ the fancy.
128. The recurrence of ideas, says Hartley, especially visible and audible ones, in a vivid manner, but without any regard to the order observed in past facts, is ascribed to the power of imagination or fancy. Every succeeding thought is the result either of some new impression, or of an association with the preceding. It is impossible, indeed, to attend so minutely to the succession of our ideas, as to distinguish and remember for a sufficient time the very impression or association which gave rise to each thought or conception; but we can do this as far as it can be expected to be done, and in so great a variety of instan ces, that we have full right to infer it in all.—A reverie differs from imagination only in this, that the person being more attentive to his own thoughts, and less disturbed by external objects, more of his trains of ideas are deducible from as sociation, and fewer from new impres sions.—It is to be observed, however, that in all cases of imagination and reve rie, the train and complexion of the thoughts depend, in part, upon the then state of body or mind. A pleasurable
or painful state of the stomach, for stance, joy or grief, will make all the thoughts tend to the same cast. " Objects and circumstances may be so disposed," says Mr. Grant, (in a very valuable paper on Reverie, for which sec " Manchester Memoirs," vol. i. or " Nicholson's Jour nal," vol. xv.) "as to give to reverie a pleasing or pensive, a refined or an ele gant direction. 1 believe it is unnecessa ry to ask whether the mind will not be more apt to depart from serious medi tation in a gaudy chapel, than in the solemn gloom of a cathedral? It is re marked by an eminent medical writer, that light, introduced by opening the window shutters, gave a gayer cast to the ideas of a patient who laboured under reverie. The study of Tasso was a Gothic apartment, and he fancied his familiar spirit to converse with him through a window of stained glass." 129. We might very easily enlarge on this faculty, and particularly on the regu lation of it, as affecting the character and the happiness ; but we suppose that none of our readers, who are much interested in the pursuits of mental philosophy, are without access to Dugald Stewart's " Ele ments," in the last chapter of which they will find an elegant, scientific, and highly important consideration of this point; and as we have already gone to the limits of our article, we must hasten to a conclu sion.—Our object has been to lay before or readers a view of the leading features Of the most important of all sciences, next to religion, to which it is eminently subservient ; and in accomplishing this object we have endeavoured to show its practical value. We have, in many places, made a most free use of Hartley's "Ob servations ;" and we shall think ourselves happy if we shall have succeeded in making the way smoother for an acquaint ance with that profound and invaluable work, among such of our readers as have not previously paid much attention to the subject. To such we beg leave to reccommend, Mr. Delsham's "Ele.