moment I begin to compare or contrast one with another, or to give the
character of any of them, I put into play the higher, the imaginative
action; for, to draw an historical character, the facts collected by
memory must be shaped and colored and organized, the details
gathered must be combined into a whole by the intellect, which being a
mere tool, the success of the result (the tool being of a temper to do
the work laid on it) will depend on the quality of the powers that
handle it, that is, on the writer's gifts of sympathy.

The degree and fullness wherewith the imaginative power shall be
called upon depending thus on faculties of feeling, thence it is that
the word _imagination_ has come to be appropriated to the highest
exercise of the power, that, namely, which is accomplished by those
few who, having more than usual emotive capacity in combination with
sensibility to the beautiful, are hereby stimulated to mold and shape
into fresh forms the stores gathered by perception and memory, or the
material originated within the mind through its creative fruitfulness.
In strictness, this exaltation of intellectual action should be called
_poetic_ imagination.

To imagine is, etymologically speaking, _with_ the mind to form _in_
the mind an image; that is, by inward power to produce an interior
form, a something substantial made out of what we term the
unsubstantial. To imagine is thus always, in a certain sense, to
create; and even men of dullest mentality have this power in
_kind_. The _degree_ in which men have it makes one of the chief
differences among them. The power is inherent, is implied in the very
existence of the human mind. When it is most lively the mind creates
out of all it feels and hears and sees, taking a simple sight or hint
or impression or incident, and working out images, making much out of