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 ...

346 IMAGINATION.
tions on this slubject I have already sufficiently explained in
treating of abstraction.
I agree with him further, that a great proportion of the words
which are used in poetry and eloquence, more especially, I think,
in the latter, produce very powerful effects on the mind, by exciting emotions which we have been accustomed to associate
with particular sounds, without leading the imagination to formn
to itself any pictures or representations; and his account of the
manner in which such words operate, appears to me satisfactory.
"' Such words are, in reality, but mere sounds; but they are
sounds, which, being used on particular occasions, wherein we
receive some good, or suffer some evil; or see others affected
with good or evil; or which we hear applied to other interesting
things or events; and being applied in such a variety of cases
that we know readily by habit to what things they belong, they
produce in the mind, whenever they are afterwards mentioned,
effects similar to those of their occasions. The sounds being
often used without reference to any particular occasion, and
carrying still their first impressions, they at last utterly lose
their connection with the particular occasions that gave rise to
them; yet the sound, without any annexed notion, continues to
operate as before."
But words in poetry must raise emotions and ideas also.Notwithstanding, however, these concessions, I cannot admit that
it is in this way poetry produces its principal effect. Whence
is it that general and abstract expressions are so tame and lifeless, in comparison of those which are particular and figurative?
Is it not because the former do not give any exercise to the imagination, like the latter? Whence the distinction, acknowledged by all critics ancient and modern, between that charm of
words which evaporates in the process of translation, and those
permanent beauties, which, presenting to the mind the distinctness of a picture, may impart pleasure to the most remote regions and ages? Is it not, that in the one case, the poet addresses himself to associations which are local and temnporary;
in the other; to these essential principles of human nature, from
which poetry and painting derive their common attractions?