Page:Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915).djvu/43

28 imagination is the mind working under great reservations which set it free; pursuing trains of images or ideas which comparison with the complete fabric of fact — from which its reservations protect it — would arrest or disfigure. It is a curious question how far a great work of imagination might conceivably be more consistent and more solid than what we call real reality. The objection of principle would be, that, just because imagination and reality only differ in degree, any such solid and consistent. imagination would of itself pass over to the enemy and fortify and enlarge the world of real facts, just as Shakespeare’s imagination reinforces our knowledge of real human nature. You cannot say “Shakespeare’s world of fancy is greater and more thorough than our world of fact,” because Shakespeare’s world of fancy has inserted itself into our world of fact. But the world of imagination is in no way subordinate to the total structure of real fact and truth. It is an alternative world, framed, no doubt, on the