I see in Imagination a power which I can express to my own satisfaction
by two terms, of which you, Seward, sometimes look as if you refused me
the use, disabling me from defining for you. For myself, I see “Passion
moulding or influencing Intellectual Forms.” As the language stands
hitherto, I do not see my way of getting out of the two terms. You want,
on the lowest steps, a very elementary description—something far below
the Poet—something as yet far short of the sublime, the beautiful, and
the wonderful. Tell me some one who has felt fear, or anger, or love, or
hate—how these have affected for him the objects of simple apprehension
or of conception; of sight, for instance—of sound? Has anything through
his fear seemed larger—through his hate wickeder, than it is? For that
differencing of an object by a passion, I know no name but Imagination.
It is the transformation of a reality; that seems to me to be the ground
of what we more loftily apprehend under the name Imagination.
The great differences in the different psychological states and facts
arising out of the different passions or passionate moments, are
various, endless. Such influences from pleasure and pain, from loves of
some sort, and from hates of some sort, take effect for us in all the
objects with which we have intercourse. They make what it is to us. They
make man what he is to us. They are the life of our souls. They are
given to all human spirits.
SEWARD.
We have, all of us, clean forgotten Milton.
SCENE II.—_The Van._ TIME—_Midnight._
NORTH—TALBOYS—SEWARD.
NORTH.
May the bond of Unity lying at the heart of the _Paradise Lost_, be said
to be the following _Ethical Dogma_?
“The Good of the created rational Intelligence subsists in the conscious
consent of his Will, with the holy Will of the Creator.”
His Good:—_i. e._ his innocence and original happiness, whilst these
last:—his virtue and regained happiness, if he attain virtue and regain
happiness:—these and the full excellence of his intellectual and natural
powers—
TALBOYS.
It is Ethical, and more than Ethical.
NORTH.
The Innocence and Fall of the Rebel Angels:—The Bliss and Loyalty of the
Upright:—(Consider Abdiel:) The Innocence and Fall and Restoration of
Man:—are various Illustrations of this great Dogma. The Restoration, as
respects Man himself:—and far more eminently as respects the person of
the _Uncreated_ Restorer.
SEWARD.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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