On Criticism

Extract

The life of the spirit is the life of freedom, the life that responds to nature’s charms, to her colour, her cadences, her music: the poetry that sums these up and calls them evanescent and calls them also beauty. Spirit is not created art. Spirit is the poised brush; it is gazing; it is listening. Spirit is sensitivity that asks not why nor whether, that simply enjoys and through enjoyment may give rise to creativity.

What is the Imagination? That it is a very important thing, or an essential human faculty, we can all agree; but after that the trouble begins. And, as generally happens, those who have spoken of it with most seriousness and authority are the hardest to understand. “Imagination is the Human existence itself,” said Blake, who had plenty of of it. It is “the esemplastic power”—that is, the power of shaping diversity into unity—said Coleridge. “It may be compared to Adam’s dream.” A. C. Bradley, elucidating this, yet speaking with his own authority, said: “Wherever the imagination is satisfied, there, if we had a knowledge we had not, we should discover no idle fancy, but an image of a truth. “ That brings us back to Blake again, in his dictum: “Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.”