Suppose he had introduced himself as one of the strictest reasoners:  do they form a body of men hitherto free from false conclusions and illusory speculations?  The driest argument has its hallucinations, too hastily concluding that its net will now at last be large enough to hold the universe.  Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an illusory world in the shape of axioms, definitions and propositions, with a final exclusion of fact signed Q.E.D.  No formulas for thinking will save us mortals from mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the matter to be thought about.  And since the unemotional intellect may carry us into a mathematical dream-land where nothing is but what is not, perhaps an emotional intellect may have absorbed into its passionate vision of possibilities some truth of what will be—­the more comprehensive massive life feeding theory with new material, as the sensibility of the artist seizes combinations which science explains and justifies.  At any rate, presumptions to the contrary are not to be trusted. [Footnote:  Chapter XLI.]

As explicit is a passage in Theophrastus Such, wherein imagination is regarded as a means of knowledge, because it rests on a subconscious expression of experience.

It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiae of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the habitual confusion of probable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact, with far-reaching memories and stored residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations of human existence. [Footnote:  Chapter XIII.]

Imagination, feeling and the whole inward life are being constantly shaped by our actions.  Experience gives new character to the inward life, and at the same time determines its motives and its inclinations.  The muscles develop as they are used; what has been once done it is easier to do again.  In the same way, our deeds influence our lives, and compel us to repeat our actions.  At least this is George Eliot’s opinion, and one she is fond of re-affirming.  After Arthur had wronged Hetty, his life was changed, and of this change wrought in his character by his conduct, George Eliot says,—­

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts which constitute a man’s critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character.  There is a terrible coercion in our deeds which may at first turn the honest man into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for this reason—­that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise