Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/258

228 referring to striking productions and achievements, Anticipatio quædam decorum. not to acts of virtue. Nevertheless, at the last analysis, it might be found that imagination has impelled even the saints and martyrs of humanity.

Imagination is the creative origin of what is fine, not in art and song alone, but also in all forms of action,—in campaigns, civil triumphs, material conquest. I have mentioned its indispensability to the scientists. It takes, they surmise, four hundred and ninety years for the light of Rigel to visit us. Modern imagination goes in a second to the darkness beyond the utmost star, speculates whether the ether itself may not have a limiting surface, is prepared to see at any time a new universe come sailing from the outer void, or to discover a universe within our own under absolutely novel conditions. It posits molecules, atomic rings; it wreaks itself upon the ultimate secrets of existence. But in the practical world our men of action are equally, though often unwittingly, possessed by it. The imagination of inventors, organizers, merchant princes, railway kings, is conceptive and strenuous. It bridges rivers, tunnels mountains, makes an ocean-ferry, develops the forces of vapor and electricity; and carries each to swift utility; is already picturing an empery of the air, and doubtless sighs that its tangible franchise is restricted to one humble planet.

If the triumphs of the applied imagination have more and more engrossed public attention, it must