rm for immediate use, we summon up a
vision or image of the thing; we do not remember it in words, as we
remember the fact that it took so many days to blow, or that it was
gathered at such and such a time.

The knowledge of things retained in this visible form is called
conception by the metaphysicians, which term I shall retain; it is
inaccurately called imagination by Taylor, in the passage quoted by
Wordsworth in the preface to his poems, not but that the term
imagination is etymologically and rightly expressive of it, but we want
that term for a higher faculty.

Sec. 2. How connected with verbal knowledge.

There are many questions respecting this faculty of conception of very
great interest, such as the exact amount of aid that verbal knowledge
renders so visible, (as, for instance, the verbal knowledge that a
flower has five, or seven, or ten petals, or that a muscle is inserted
at such and such a point of the bone, aids the conception of the flower
or the limb;) and again, what amount of aid the visible knowledge
renders to the verbal, as for instance, whether any one, being asked a
question about some animal or thing, which instantly and from verbal
knowledge he cannot answer, may have such power of summoning up the
image of the animal or thing as to ascertain the fact, by actual
beholding, (which I do not assert, but can conceive to be possible;) and
again, what is that indefinite and subtile character of the conception
itself in most men, which admits not of being by themselves traced or
realized, and yet is a sure test of likeness in any representation of
the thing; like an intaglio, with a front light on it, whose lines
cannot be seen, and yet they will fit one definite form only, and that
accurately; these and many other questions it is irrelevant at present
to determine,[50] since to forward our present purpose, it will be well
to suppose the conception, aided by verbal knowledge, to be absolutely
perfect, and we will suppose a man to retain such clear image of a large
number of the material things he has seen, as to be able to set down any
of them on paper with perfect fidelity and absolute memory[51] of their
most minute features.

In thus setting them down on paper, he works, I suppose, exactly as he
would work from nature, only copying the remembered image in his mind,
instead of the real thing. He is, therefore, still nothing more than a
copyist. There is no exercise of imagination in this what