Note 75 — Chapter III · (continued 2)

I find it impossible to fix any one English equivalent to Hegel's use of the words Einbildungskraft, Phantasie, or Vorstellung, in the sense at least that fancy, imagination, or phantasy have been used and defined by famous English writers. Generally speaking, I should say that Phantasie, or as it is called sometimes "artistic" or "creative" Phantasie, stands for the most intellectual faculty, though Vorstellung is also used in much the same sense. But it is impossible to arrive at any clear distinction such as was originally made so profoundly by Ruskin between fancy, the instrument of poetical talent, the surface gift, and imagination or, as he called it, penetrative imagination, which summarizes all the powers of a genius and personality and enters into the heart of the subject-matter by an illuminating flash which reveals reality rather than illustrates by means of image. The present passage appears to me even more unsatisfactory than the more carefully digested analysis at the end of Part I, when Hegel discusses the artist. It not merely ignores the indispensable presence of imagination in the pioneers of science, but appears to myself to confuse talent as the natural gift of a man with the mode in which it is exercised in presenting ideas in sensuous imagery, or at least makes the former depend on the latter. Professor Bosanquet translates Phantasie here by "fancy." But "fancy" is, in our way of looking at it, precisely not the faculty which distinctively belongs to "the great mind and the big heart or soul," though other parts of the description are more applicable. And in short, as I say, to fix definite English equivalents to Hegel's phraseology appears to me impossible.