Practical Essays | Page 8

to one's life
are merely the special direction of a natural exuberance of feeling or
emotion. A spare and thin emotional temperament will undoubtedly
have preferences, likings and dislikings, but it can never supply the
material for fervour or enthusiasm in anything.
The early determining of natural tastes is a subject of high practical
interest. We shall only remark at present that a varied and broad
groundwork of early education is the best known device for this end.

* * * * *
[RELATION OF FEELINGS TO IMAGINATION.]
III. A third error, deserving of brief comment, is a singular inversion of
the relationship of the Feelings to the Imagination. It is frequently
affirmed, both in criticism and in philosophy, that the Feelings depend
upon, or have their basis in, the Imagination.
An able and polished writer, discussing the character of Edmund Burke,
remarks: "The passions of Burke were strong; this is attributable in
great measure to the intensity of the imaginative faculty". Again,
Dugald Stewart, observing upon the influence of the Imagination on
Happiness, says: "All that part of our happiness or misery which arises
from our hopes or our fears derives its existence entirely from the
power of imagination". He even goes the length of affirming that
"cowardice is entirely a disease of the imagination". Another writer
accounts for the intensity of the amatory sentiments in Robert Burns by
the strength of his imagination.
[IMAGINATION GROUNDED IN FEELING.]
Now, I venture to affirm that this view very nearly reverses the fact.
The Imagination is determined by the Feelings, and not the Feelings by
the Imagination. Intensity of feeling, emotion, or passion, is the earlier
fact: the intellect swayed and controlled by feeling, shaping forms to
correspond with an existing emotional tone, is Imagination. It was not
the imaginative faculty that gave Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and the
poets generally, their great enjoyment of nature; but the love of nature,
pre-existing, turned the attention and the thoughts upon nature, filling
the mind as a consequence with the impressions, images, recollections
of nature; out of which grew the poetic imaginings. Imagination is a
compound of intellectual power and feeling. The intellectual power
may be great, but if it is not accompanied with feeling, it will not
minister to feeling; or it will minister to many feelings by turns, and to
none in particular. As far as the intellectual power of a poet goes, few
men have excelled Bacon. He had a mind stored with imagery, able to
produce various and vivid illustrations of whatever thought came

before him; but these illustrations touched no deep feeling; they were
fresh, original, racy, fanciful, picturesque, a play of the head that never
touched the heart. The man was by nature cold; he had not the
emotional depth or compass of an average Englishman. Perhaps his
strongest feeling of an enlarged or generous description was for human
progress, but it did not rise to passion; there was no fervour, no fury in
it. Compare him with Shelley on the same subject, and you will see the
difference between meagreness and intensity of feeling. What intellect
can be, without strong feeling, we have in Bacon; what intellect is, with
strong feeling, we have in Shelley. The feeling gives the tone to the
thoughts; sets the intellect at work to find language having its own
intensity, to pile up lofty and impressive circumstances; and then we
have the poet, the orator, the thoughts that breathe, and the words that
burn. Bacon wrote on many impressive themes--on Truth, on Love, on
Religion, on Death, and on the Virtues in detail; he was always original,
illustrative, fanciful; if intellectual means and resources could make a
man feel in these things, he would have felt deeply; yet he never did.
The material of feeling is not contained in the intellect; it has a seat and
a source apart. There was nothing in mere intellectual gifts to make
Byron a misanthrope: but, given that state of the feelings, the intellect
would be detained and engrossed by it; would minister to, expand, and
illustrate it; and intellect so employed is Imagination.
Burke had indisputably a powerful imagination. He had both
elements:--the intellectual power, or the richly stored and highly
productive mind; and the emotional power, or the strength of passion
that gives the lead to intellect. His intellectual strength was often put
forth in the Baconian manner of illustration, in light and sportive
fancies. There were many occasions where his feelings were not much
roused. He had topics to urge, views to express, and he poured out
arguments, and enlivened them with illustrations. He was, on those
occasions, an able expounder, and no more. But when his passions
were stirred to the depths by the French Revolution, his intellectual
power, taking a new flight, supplied