Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/42

and of exact science itself — the scientific use of the imagination is a well-known topic. The only difference is that when imagination is free, when the mind is operating, for instance, not in the service of theoretical truth, but in that of aesthetic feeling, .then it altogether ceases to be bound by agreement with what we call reality as a whole. It cannot help starting from what we call experience, from what we have felt and seen, because there is nothing else to start from; but its guiding purpose is the satisfaction of feeling, and not the construction of a system in which every fact shall have its logically appropriate place. The only test is, whether it satisfies the feeling which inspires it. And its method need not be logical, though it often is so, and I incline to think is so in the best imaginative work. By saying it need not be logical, I mean that in following out a suggestion it need not adhere to the main thread of connection. It may start afresh on any incidental feature that presents itself. Practically,