Imagination and Imitation

Lucius Flavius Philostratus, F.C. Conybeare · Confusing Words Series · 5 pages

A single passage, given whole, from book VI of Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana in Conybeare's translation. Apollonius is speaking of the works of artists such as Phidias and Praxiteles, and his claim is that imagination wrought them — a wiser and subtler artist by far than imitation.

The reason he gives is the whole of the distinction: imitation can only create as its handiwork what it has seen, whereas imagination can equally create what it has not seen, since it conceives its ideal with reference to the reality rather than to the model. And the two differ in nerve as much as in reach — imitation is often baffled by terror, but imagination by nothing, for it marches undismayed to the goal it has itself laid down. The editor's footnote points readers to the chapter on validating imagination by faith and will in Compassion: The Spirit of Truth, the first of the Philaletheians major works.

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