Imagery is confined to actual figures; and it is this measure and this _form_ which give power to the creations of the mind. The imaginative writer should possess a rich store of perceptive observations, and the more accurate and perfect these are, the more vigorous will be the form he creates. The insane talk of fantastic things, but we do not therefore say that they have a great deal of "imagination"; there is a vast gulf between the delirious confusion of thought and the metaphorical eloquence of the imagination. In the first case there is a total incapacity to perceive actual things correctly, and also to construct organically with the intelligence; in the second, the two things are co-existent as forms closely bound up one with the other. The value of imaginative speech is determined by these conditions: that the images used should be _original_, that their author should himself link together the actual and the created images, his own skill making him susceptible to their just and harmonious association. If he repeats or imitates the images of others, he achieves nothing. Hence it is necessary that every artist should be an observer; and so, speaking of the generality of intelligences, it may be said that in order to develop the imagination it is necessary for every one first of all to put himself in contact with reality. The same thing holds good in art. The artist "imagines" his figure; he does not copy it, he "creates" it. But this creation is in fact the _fruit_ of the mind which is rooted in the observation of reality. The painter and the sculptor are, _par excellence_, types of visual susceptibility to the forms and colors of their environment, capable of perceiving its harmonies and contrasts; and it is by refining his powers of observation that the artist finally perfects himself and succeeds in creating a masterpiece. The immortal art of Greece was above all an art based on observation; the scanty clothing which was the fashion of his day enabled the Greek artist to contemplate the human form freely; and the exquisite sensibility of his eye enabled him to distinguish the beautiful body from that which lacked harmony, until under the impulse of genius, he was able to create the ideal figure, conceived by the fusion of individual beauties chosen from details in the sensorial storehouse of the mind. The artist, when he creates certainly does not compose by putting together the parts which are to form the whole as in a mosaic; in the ardor of inspiration he sees the complete _new figure_, born of his genius; but details he has accumulated have served to nourish it, as the blood nourishes the new man in the bosom of his mother.