Holding in mind these general characteristics of the creative imagination,
as traced by Ribot, let us now test our conception of the distinctively
artistic imagination. Countless are the attempts to define or describe it,
and it would be unwise for the student, at this point, to rest satisfied
with any single formulation of its functions. But it may be helpful to
quote a paragraph from Hartley B. Alexander's brilliant and subtle book,
_Poetry and the Individual_:
[Footnote: Putnam's, 1906.]

"The energy of the mind or of the soul--for it welds all psychical
activities--which is the agent of our world-winnings and the
procreator of our growing life, we term imagination. It is
distinguished from perception by its relative freedom from the
dictation of sense; it is distinguished from memory by its power to
acquire--memory only retains; it is distinguished from emotion in
being a force rather than a motive; from the understanding in being
an assimilator rather than the mere weigher of what is set before it;
from the will, because the will is but the wielder of the reins--the
will is but the charioteer, the imagination is the Pharaoh in
command. It is distinguished from all these, yet it includes them
all, for it is the full functioning of the whole mind and in the
total activity drives all mental faculties to its one supreme
end--the widening of the world wherein we dwell. Through beauty the
world grows, and it is the business of the imagination to create the
beautiful. The imagination synthesises, humanises, personalises,
illumines reality with the soul's most intimate moods, and so exalts
with spiritual understandings."

The value of such a description, presented without any context, will vary
with the training of the individual reader, but its quickening power will