« back to search

"A multitude of ideas, collected by such an imagination, form a confused chaos, in which inconsistent conceptions are often mixt, conceptions so unsuitable and disproportioned, that they can no more be combined into one regular work, than a number of wheels taken from different watches, can be united into one machine."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Author

An Essay on Genius

Place of Publication

London and Edinburgh

Publisher

Printed for W. Strahan, T.Cadell, and W. Creech

Date

1774

Metaphor

"A multitude of ideas, collected by such an imagination, form a confused chaos, in which inconsistent conceptions are often mixt, conceptions so unsuitable and disproportioned, that they can no more be combined into one regular work, than a number of wheels taken from different watches, can be united into one machine."

Metaphor in Context

Neither fertility nor regularity of imagination will form a good genius, if the one be disjoined from the other. If fertility be wanting, the correctest imagination will be confined within narrow bounds, and will be very slow in its operations; there can be no penetration or copious invention. If regularity be absent, an exuberant invention will lose itself in a wilderness of its own creation. There is a false fertility, which arises from a disordered and irregular fancy. As the same idea bears some relation to an infinite number of other ideas, the associating principles may lead us, after a very few steps, to such ideas as are connected with the last that was present, yet have no connexion either with the former ones, or with the main design. A man, therefore, who follows any association, however trivial or devious, that hits his fancy, may show a great deal of imagination without displaying any real genius. The imagination produces abundance of glaring, brilliant thoughts; but not being conducive to any fixt design, nor organized into one whole, they can be regarded only as an abortion of fancy, not as the legitimate progeny of genius. A multitude of ideas, collected by such an imagination, form a confused chaos, in which inconsistent conceptions are often mixt, conceptions so unsuitable and disproportioned, that they can no more be combined into one regular work, than a number of wheels taken from different watches, can be united into one machine. Were it necessary to produce instances of a fruitful imagination unproductive of true genius, we might find enough among those pretenders to poetry, who can, through many lines, run from one shining image to another, and finish many harmonious periods, without any sentiment or design; or among those pretenders to science, who can devise a hundred experiments, coinciding in all their material circumstances, without a view to any conclusion, and without advancing useful knowledge a single step. Such imagination is like a tree so overcharged with fruit, that no part of it can come to full maturity.
(I.iii, pp. 49-50)