Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/22

 of something inevitable, some quality incorporate and innate, which determines that it shall be thus and not otherwise; and we need not the 'illative sense' of Dr. Newman's invention to teach us 'the grammar of assent' to the matter proposed to us as subject or as object for our imaginative belief. Belief, and not assent, it is that we give to the highest.

There is no surer test as there can be no higher evidence than this of that imperative and primary genius which holds its power in fee of no other mind, which derives of no foreign stream through the conduit of no alien channel. Perhaps we may reasonably divide all imaginative work into three classes; the lowest, which leaves us in a complacent