we comprehend and deal with things out of sight with an ease and confidence directly proportioned to the vividness and perfection of the CONCEPTION, as compared with the REALITY.
Let a man of business select, from the diversity of his engagements, that one which seems the most absolutely to exclude the visible qualities of things, and he will yet find, if he narrowly analyzes the mental operation while this particular branch of his business engages his attention, that it is very greatly by the aid of the IDEAS of objects and persons as visible, that he retains his hold of the various particulars of the calculation, or of the adjustment of interests; and that, if he can fancy himself entirely shorn of these ideas, his thoughts would immediately fall into confusion.
If it be so in the extreme instances which we have now supposed, how much more is it thus on all occasions in which the visible forms and qualities of things are immediately connected with the mental process! Of what importance to us is the conceptive faculty while taking our part in ordinary conversation, turning as it does upon narrativedescriptioncomparisonallusion:of what sovereign importance to the public speaker or writerto the poet and the painter, the sculptor and the architect! And it might be shown in detail that the divining skill of the physician in realizing to himself the interior condition of the animal system, and the adroitness and tact of the surgeon in the performance of obscure operations, turn very much upon the exactness and vivacity of the conceptive faculty, which we might call the true stethoscope. Whether we are distinctly conscious of the fact or not, it may be proved that this IDEALITY, or power of calling up images of visible objects, is the broad basis of our mental operations, of whatever kind, and whether ordinary or professionalwhether philosophical or imaginative.
