No other than an artistic
imagination, however, fulfilled of science, could have attained to the
discovery of the fact that the leaf is the imperfect flower.
When we turn to history, however, we find probably the greatest
operative sphere of the intellectuo-constructive imagination. To
discover its laws; the cycles in which events return, with the reasons
of their return, recognizing them notwithstanding metamorphosis; to
perceive the vital motions of this spiritual body of mankind; to learn
from its facts the rule of God; to construct from a succession of broken
indications a whole accordant with human nature; to approach a scheme of
the forces at work, the passions overwhelming or upheaving, the
aspirations securely upraising, the selfishnesses debasing and
crumbling, with the vital interworking of the whole; to illuminate all
from the analogy with individual life, and from the predominant phases
of individual character which are taken as the mind of the people--this
is the province of the imagination. Without her influence no process of
recording events can develop into a history. As truly might that be
called the description of a volcano which occupied itself with a
delineation of the shapes assumed by the smoke expelled from the
mountain's burning bosom.
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