_Office of this Faculty._--By the operation of this power, the former perceptions and sensations are replaced in thought, and combined as in mental reproduction, but not, as in mental reproduction, according to the _original_ and _actual_, so that the past is simply repeated, but rather according to the mind's own _ideal_, and at its own will and fancy; so that while the groundwork of the representation is something which has been, at some time, an object of perception, the picture itself, as it stands before the mind in its completeness, is not the copy of any thing actually perceived, but a creation of the mind's own. This power the mind has, and it is a power distinct from either of those already mentioned, and not less wonderful than either. The details of the original perception are omitted; time, place, circumstance fall out, or are varied to suit the fancy; the scene is laid when and where we like; the incidents follow each other no longer in their actual order; the original, in a word, is no longer faithfully transcribed, but the picture is conformed to the taste and pleasure of the artist. The conception becomes IDEAL. This is imagination in its true and proper sphere--the creative power of the mind. § II.--RELATION OF THIS TO OTHER FACULTIES. The true province of imagination may be more definitely distinguished by comparing it with other powers of the mind. _Imagination as related to Memory._--How, then, does imagination differ from _memory_? In this, first and chiefly, that memory gives us the actual, imagination, the ideal; in this also, that memory deals only with the past, while imagination, not confined to such limits, sweeps on bolder wing, and without bound, alike through the future and the past. In one respect they agree. Both give the _absent_--that which is not now and here present to sense. Both are representative rather than presentative. Both also are forms of conception. _To Perception._--In what respect does it differ from _perception_? In perception the object is given, presented; in imagination it is thought, conceived; in the former case it is given as _actual_, in the latter, conceived not as actual but as ideal. _To Judgment._--Imagination differs from _judgment_, in that the latter deals, not like the former, with things in themselves considered, but rather with the relations of things--is, in other words, a form not of _simple_, but of _relative_ conception; and also in that it deals with these relations as _actual_, not as ideal. It has always specific reference to truth, and is concerned in the formation of opinion and belief, as resting on the evidence of truth, and the perception of the actual relations of things.