Duff, William (1732-1815)

An Essay on Original Genius

London

Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly

1767

"Imagination is that faculty whereby the mind not only reflects on its own operations, but which assembles the various ideas conveyed to the understanding by the canal of sensation, and treasured up in the repository of the memory, compounding or disjoining them at pleasure; and which, by its plastic power of inventing new associations of ideas, and of combining them with infinite variety, is enabled to present a creation of its own, and to exhibit scenes and objects which never existed in nature."

Imagination is that faculty whereby the mind not only reflects on its own operations, but which assembles the various ideas conveyed to the understanding by the canal of sensation, and treasured up in the repository of the memory, compounding or disjoining them at pleasure; and which, by its plastic power of inventing new associations of ideas, and of combining them with infinite variety, is enabled to present a creation of its own, and to exhibit scenes and objects which never existed in nature. So indispensibly necessary is this faculty in the composition of Genius, that all the discoveries in science, and all the inventions and improvements in art, if we except such as have arisen from mere accident, derive their origin from its vigorous exertion. At the same time it must be confessed, that all the false and fallacious systems of the former, and all the irregular and illegitimate performances in the latter, which have ever been obtruded upon mankind, may be justly imputed to the unbounded extravagance of the same faculty: such effects are the natural consequences of an exuberant imagination, without any proportionable share of the reasoning talent. It is evidently necessary therefore, in order to render the productions of Genius regular and just, as well as elegant and ingenious, that the discerning and coercive power of judgment should mark and restrain the excursions of a wanton imagination; in other words, that the austerity of reason should blend itself with the gaiety of the graces. Here then we have another ingredient of Genius; an ingredient essential to its constitution, and without which it cannot possibly be exhibited to full advantage, even an accurate and penetrating JUDGMENT.
(pp. 6-8)

Liquid::Canal Container::Repository Architecture::Glass-House

Searching in C-H Lion. Found again reading Sean Silver, The Mind is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2015), 3.

2 entries in ESTC (1767).

Text from William Duff, An Essay on Original Genius; and its Various Modes of Exertion in Philosophy and the Fine Arts, Particularly in Poetry (London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly, 1767). <Link to ESTC>

07/01/2013