Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/73

Letter 6] consequences would harmonize with, or be identical with, the data to which we are working back.

The same process is common in the reasoning that deals with what is called Circumstantial Evidence Thus, it is asserted by A that he saw B commit a murder in the midst of a field, five minutes before midnight, on the first day of last month: how can we test the truth of A's assertion? The negative faculty of Reason cannot answer the question. But once more Imagination steps in and says, "Imagine the story to be true; imagine yourself to be in A's place; imagine the circumstances which would have surrounded him, the hidden place from which he saw the murder, the light which enabled him to see it, the precise sight that he saw, the voices or sounds that he heard, and, in a word, all the details of a likely and coherent narrative." When the Imagination has done this and "imagined" the place—perhaps a hedge—the light—moonlight, and so on, Reason steps in, and corroborates or rejects, by shewing that there was, or was not, a hedge whence the deed could have been witnessed; that there was a full moon or no moon on the night in question; that, if there had been a moon, the place in question was open to the moonlight, or in deep shadow: and thus Imagination and Reason (aided by experience of the place and knowledge of the time) arrive at a conclusion, the former making a positive, the latter a negative contribution. Hence it appears that even in those questions which are called pre-eminently "practical"—for what can be more "practical" than a trial in a law-court for life or death?—the Imagination plays so great a part that without its aid the reason could effect little or nothing.

Here I must break off; but I hope I have said enough to satisfy you that the imaginative faculty, though it needs the constant test of Reason and Experience, is far more