_The Mind not wholly passive in the Process._--I reply this is not altogether so. The mind is not altogether _passive_ in this thing; there is an _activity_ involved in the process, and that of the mind's own. There is a power, either original or acquired, of conceiving such thoughts as are now under consideration, a readiness for them, a proneness to them, a bias, propensity, inclination, more powerful in some than in others, by virtue of which this process occurs. We may call this a faculty, though, more strictly, perhaps, _a susceptibility_, but it is, in truth, one of the endowments of the mind, part of its furniture, one form of its activity. _A more direct voluntary Element._--But there is, further than this, and more directly, a voluntary element in the process. It is in our power to yield, or not, to this propensity, this inclination to the ideal; to put forth the mental activity in this direction, or to withhold it; to say whether or not the imagination shall have its free, full play, and with liberated wing soar aloft through her native skies; whether our speech shall be simple argument, unadorned stout logic, or logic not less stout, clothed with the pleasing, rustling drapery which a lively imagination is able to throw, like a splendid robe, over the naked form of truth. There is, then, really a mental activity, and an activity in some degree under control of the will, in the process we are considering. _Same Difficulty lies elsewhere._--The same difficulty which meets us here, meets us elsewhere, and lies equally against other mental powers. We cannot, by direct volition, remember a past event, for this implies, as in the case of the volition to imagine a given scene, either that the thing is already in view, or else that we will we know not what. Yet, as every one knows, there is a way of recalling past events; a faculty or power of doing this thing; a faculty which we exercise when we please. The same may be said of the power of thought in general. We cannot, by direct volition, _think_ of any given thing, for to will to think of it is already to have thought of it, yet there is mental activity involved in every process of thought a mental power exercised, a faculty of some sort exercised. Nor is it a power altogether beyond our own control. We can direct our thoughts, can govern them, can turn them, as we do a water course, that _will_ flow somewhere, but whose channel we may lead this way or that. § IX.--USE AND ABUSE OF IMAGINATION.