be started and modified by what is without them, all this--that is,
all human life, in its endless forms, varieties, degrees, all that can
come within the scope of man--is the domain of poetry; only, to
enjoy, to behold, to move about in, even to enter this domain, the
individual man must bear within him a light that shall transfigure
whatever it falls on, a light of such subtle quality, of such
spiritual virtue, that wherever it strikes it reveals something of the
very mystery of being.

In many men, in whole tribes, this light is so feebly nourished that
it gives no illumination. To them the two vast worlds, the inner and
the outer, are made up of opaque facts, cognizable, available, by the
understanding, and by it handled grossly and directly. Things,
conditions, impressions, feelings, are not taken lovingly into the
mind, to be made there prolific through higher contacts. They are not
dandled joyfully in the arms of the imagination. Imagination! Before
proceeding a step further,--nay, in order that we be able to proceed
safely,--we must make clear to ourselves what means this great word,
imagination.

The simplest intellectual work is to perceive physical objects. Having
perceived an object several times, the intellect lifts itself to a
higher process, and knows it when it sees it again, remembers it.
_Perception_ is the first, the simplest, the initiatory intellectual
process, _memory_ is the second. Higher than they, and rising
out of them, is a third process, the one whereby are modified and
transmuted the mental impressions of what is perceived or remembered.
A mother, just parted from her child, recalls his form and face,
summons before _her mind's eye_ an image of him; and this image is
modified by her feelings, she seeing him in attitudes and relations in