Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 109
cient importance in the human constitution to deserve an appropriated name; and, for this purpose, the word fancy would appear to be the most convenient that our language affords.
Dr. Reid has somewhere observed, that " the part of our constitution on which the association of ideas depends, was called,
by the older English writers, the fantasy or fancy;" a use of
the word, we may remark, which coincides, in many instances,
with that which I propose to make of it. It differs from it
only in this, that these writers applied it to the association of
ideas in general, whereas I restrict its application to that habit
of association, which is subservient to poetical imagination.
According to the explanation which has now been given' of
the word fancy, the office of this power is to collect materials for
the imagination; and, therefore, the latter power presupposes
the former, while the former does not necessarily suppose the
latter. A man whose habits of association present to him, for
illustrating or embellishing a subject, a number of resembling,
or of analogous ideas, we call a man of fancy: but for an effort
of imagination, various other powers are necessary, particularly
the powers of taste and of judgment; without which, we can hope
to produce nothing that will be a source of pleasure to others.
It is the power of fancy which supplies the poet with metaphorical language, and with all the analogies which are the
foundation of his illusions; but it is the power of imagination
that creates the complex scenes he describes, and the fictitious
characters he delineates. To fancy, we apply the epithets of
rich or luxuriant; to imagination, those of beautiful or sublime.*
[* Though the best writers, as Stewart remarks, are seldom steady and
precise in the use of two terms so nearly related to each other asfiancy and
imayination, we think these two faculties may yet be distinguished from
each other by a broader line of separation than the one marked out in the
text. In fact, the assertion that it is the office of fancy only to furnish the
materials for the imagination to work upon, if it be understood to mean,
that fancy merely reproduces the sights and sounds, the thougllts and feelings, that were known before, without altering or refashioning them, or