ble example of this kind, but also the most ignoble; the
imagination, in this instance, being entirely deprived of all aid from
reason, and incapable of self-government. I believe, however, that the
noblest forms of imaginative power are also in some sort ungovernable,
and have in them something of the character of dreams; so that the
vision, of whatever kind, comes uncalled, and will not submit itself to
the seer, but conquers him, and forces him to speak as a prophet,
having no power over his words or thoughts.[41] Only, if the whole man
be trained perfectly, and his mind calm, consistent and powerful, the
vision which comes to him is seen as in a perfect mirror, serenely, and
in consistence with the rational powers; but if the mind be imperfect
and ill trained, the vision is seen as in a broken mirror, with strange
distortions and discrepancies, all the passions of the heart breathing
upon it in cross ripples, till hardly a trace of it remains unbroken. So
that, strictly speaking, the imagination is never governed; it is always
the ruling and Divine power: and the rest of the man is to it only as an
instrument which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; clearly and
sublimely if the wax be smooth and the strings true, grotesquely and
wildly if they are stained and broken. And thus the "Iliad," the
"Inferno," the "Pilgrim's Progress," the "Faerie Queen," are all of them
true dreams; only the sleep of the men to whom they came was the deep,
living sleep which God sends, with a sacredness in it, as of death, the
revealer of secrets.

Sec. LXI. Now, observe in this matter, carefully, the difference between
a dim mirror and a distorted one; and do not blame me for pressing the
analogy too far, for it will enable me to explain my meaning every way
more clearly. Most men's minds are dim mirrors, in which all truth is
seen, as St. Paul tells us, darkly: this is the fault most common and
most fatal; dulness of the heart and mistiness of sight, increasing to
utter hardness and blindness; Satan breathing upon the glass, so that if
we do not sweep the mist laboriously away, it will take no image. But,
even so far as we are able to do this, we have still the distortion to
fear, yet not to the same extent, for we can in some sort allow for the
distortion of an image, if only we can see it clearly. And the fallen
human soul, at its best, must be as a diminishing glass, and that a
broken one, to the mighty truths of the universe