The characteristics of all
Gods, including the Christian, are _pure limitation and absolute
indivisibility_. Minerva has wisdom and strength, but lacks womanly
tenderness; Juno has power and wisdom, but is without amorous charm,
which she borrows with the girdle of Venus, who in her turn is without
the wisdom of Minerva. What would these Gods become without their
limitations? They would cease to be the objects of Fancy. Fancy is a
faculty, apart from the pure intellect and from the reason. Distinct
from imagination, which develops the products of art, Fancy has
intuitions of them, grasps them herself, and herself represents them.
Fancy is to imagination as intellectual intuition is to reason. Fancy,
then, is intellectual intuition in art. In the thought of Schelling,
fancy, the new or artistic intuition, sister of intellectual intuition,
came to dominate alike the intellect and the old conception of the fancy
and the imagination, in a system for which reason alone did not suffice.
C.G. Solger followed Schelling and agreed with him in finding but little
truth in the theories of Kant, and especially of Fichte. He held that
their dialectic had failed to solve the difficulty of intellectual
intuition. He too conceived of fancy as distinct from imagination, and
divided the former into three degrees. Imagination he held to appertain
to ordinary knowledge, "which re-establishes the original intuition to
infinity.
Pages:
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310