said to prove itself.

That such an effect should follow a cause which we know to be purely
imaginary, supposes, as we have said, something in ourselves which
holds, of necessity, a predetermined relation to every object either
outwardly existing or projected from the mind, which we thus recognize
as true. If so, then the Possible and the Ideal are convertible terms;
having their existence, _ab initio_, in the nature of the mind.
The soundness of this inference is also supported negatively, as just
observed, by the opposite result, as in the case of those fantastic
combinations, which we sometimes meet with both in Poetry and
Painting, and which we do not hesitate to pronounce unnatural, that
is, false.

And here we would not be understood as implying the preëxistence of
all possible forms, as so many _patterns_, but only of that
constructive Power which imparts its own Truth to the unseen
_real_, and, under certain conditions, reflects the image or
semblance of its truth on all things imagined; and which must be
assumed in order to account for the phenomena presented in the
frequent coincident effect between the real and the feigned. Nor does
the absence of consciousness in particular individuals, as to this
Power in themselves, fairly affect its universality, at least
potentially: since by the same rule there would be equal ground for
denying the existence of any faculty of the mind which is of slow or
gradual developement; all that we may reasonably infer in such cases
is, that the whole mind is not yet revealed to itself. In some of the
greatest artists, the inventive powers have been of late developement;
as in Claude, and the sculptor Falconet. And can any one believe that,
while the latter was hewing his master's marble, and the former making