ction in each of the harmonizing parts which
can only be supplied by its fellow part. If, therefore, the combination
made is to be harmonious, the artist must induce in each of its
component parts (suppose two only, for simplicity's sake,) such
imperfection as that the other shall put it right. If one of them be
perfect by itself, the other will be an excrescence. Both must be faulty
when separate, and each corrected by the presence of the other. If he
can accomplish this, the result will be beautiful; it will be a whole,
an organized body with dependent members;--he is an inventor. If not,
let his separate features be as beautiful, as apposite, or as resemblant
as they may, they form no whole. They are two members glued together. He
is only a carpenter and joiner.

Sec. 7. Imagination is the correlative conception of imperfect component
parts.

Now, the conceivable imperfections of any single feature are infinite.
It is impossible, therefore, to fix upon a form of imperfection in the
one, and try with this all the forms of imperfection of the other until
one fits; but the two imperfections must be corelatively and
simultaneously conceived.

This is imagination, properly so called, imagination associative, the
grandest mechanical power that the human intelligence possesses, and one
which will appear more and more marvellous the longer we consider it. By
its operation, two ideas are chosen out of an infinite mass, (for it
evidently matters not whether the imperfections be conceived out of the
infinite number conceivable, or selected out of a number recollected,)
two ideas which are separately wrong, which together shall be right, and
of whose unity, therefore, the idea must be formed at the instant they
are seized, as it is only in that unity that either are good, and
therefore only the _conception of that unity can prompt the preference_.
Now, what is that prophetic action of mind, which, out of an infinite
mass of things that cannot be tried together, seizes, at the same
instant two that are fit for each other, together right; yet each
disagreeable alone.

Sec. 8. Material analogy with imagination.

This operation of mind, so far as I can see, is absolutely
inexplicable, but there is something like it in chemistry.

"The action of sulphuric acid on metallic zinc affords an instance of
what was once called disposing affinity. Zinc decomposes pure water at
common temperatures with extreme slowness; but