|
(), n.[OE. imaginacionum, F. imagination, fr. L. imaginatio. See Imagine.] 1. The imagine-making power of the mind; the power to create or reproduce ideally an object of sense previously perceived; the power to call up mental imagines. Our simple apprehension of corporeal objects, if present, is sense; if absent, is imagination. Glanvill. Imagination is of three kinds: joined with belief of that which is to come; joined with memory of that which is past; and of things present, or as if they were present. Bacon. 2. The representative power; the power to reconstruct or recombine the materials furnished by direct apprehension; the complex faculty usually termed the plastic or creative power; the fancy. The imagination of common language -- the productive imagination of philosophers -- is nothing but the representative process plus the process to which I would give the name of the "comparative." Sir W. Hamilton. The power of the mind to decompose its conceptions, and to recomb スポンサード リンク
|