between them is formed by metaphysics, are disposed to employ their wit in depreciating its value. The truth is, that, to the geometer who invents, Imagination is not less essential than to the poet who creates. They operate, indeed, differently on their object, the former abstracting and analyzing, where the latter combines and adorns;—two processes of the mind, it must, at the same time, be confessed, which seem from experience to be so little congenial, that it may be doubted if the talents of a great geometer and of a great poet will ever be united in the same person. But whether these talents be, or be not mutually exclusive, certain it is, that they who possess the one, have no right to despise those who cultivate the other. Of all the great men of antiquity, Archimedes is perhaps he who is the best entitled to be placed by the side of Homer."
D'Alembert afterwards proceeds to observe, that of these three general branches of the Encyclopedical Tree, a natural and convenient subdivision is afforded by the metaphysical distribution of things into Material and Spiritual. "With these two classes of existences," he observes farther," history and philosophy are equally conversant; but as for the Imaginagination, her imitations are entirely confined to the material world;—a circumstance," he adds, "which conspires with the other arguments above stated, in justifying Bacon for assigning to her the last place in his enumeration of our intellectual faculties."[1] Upon this subdivision he enlarges at some length, and with considerable ingenuity; but on the present occasion it would be quite superfluous to follow him any farther, as more than enough has been already quoted to enable my readers to
- ↑ In this exclusive linitations of the province of Imagination to things material and sensible, D'Alembert has followed the definition given by Descarts in his second Meditation:—Imaginari nihil aliud est quam rei corporeœ figuram seu imaginem contemplari;"—a power of the mind, which (as I have elsewhere observed) appears to me to be most precisely expressed in our language by the word Conception. The province assigned to Imagination by D'Alembert is more extensive than this, for he ascribes to her also a creative and combining power; but still his definition agrees with that of Descartes, inasmuch as it excludes entirely from her dominion both the intellectual and the moral worlds.
