You see what is the extent of imagination: it has no limits, it is applied to all things. Its distinctive character is that of deeply moving the soul in the presence of a beautiful object, or by its remembrance alone, or even by the idea alone of an imaginary object. It is recognized by the sign that it produces, by the aid of its representations, the same impression as, and even an impression more vivid than, nature by the aid of real objects. If beauty, absent and dreamed of, does not affect you as much as, and more than, present beauty, you may have a thousand other gifts,--that of imagination has been refused you. In the eyes of imagination, the real world languishes in comparison with its own fictions. One may feel that imagination is his master by the _ennui_ that real and present things give him. The phantoms of imagination have a vagueness, an indefiniteness of form, which moves a thousand times more than the clearness and distinctness of actual perceptions. And then, unless we are wholly mad,--and passion does not always render this service,--it is very difficult to see reality otherwise than as it is not, that is to say, very imperfectly. On the other hand, one makes of an image what he wishes, unconsciously metamorphoses it, embellishes it to his own liking. There is at the bottom of the human soul an infinite power of feeling and loving to which the entire world does not answer, still less a single one of its creatures, however charming. All mortal beauty, viewed near by, does not suffice for this insatiable power which it excites and cannot satisfy. But from afar, its effects disappear or are diminished, shades are mingled and confounded in the clear-obscure of memory and dream, and the objects please more because they are less determinate. The peculiarity of men of imagination is, that they represent men and things otherwise than as they are, and that they have a passion for such fantastic images. Those that are called positive men, are men without imagination, who perceive only what they see, and deal with reality as it is instead of transforming it. They have, in general, more reason than sentiment; they may be seriously, profoundly honest; they will never be either poets or artists. What makes the poet or artist is, with a foundation of good sense and reason--without which all the rest is useless--a sensitive, even a passionate heart; above all, a vivid, a powerful imagination. If sentiment acts upon imagination, we see that imagination returns with usury to sentiment what it gives.