Addison discusses his concept of Imagination and how it gives pleasure to the reader, in the eleven papers of The Spectator. He discusses how imagination works and how it gives pleasure. He makes imagination dependent on the sense of sight. He says, "it is this sense which furnishes the imagination with its ideas; so that by the pleasure of imagination or fancy I here mean such as arise from visible objects, either when we have them actually in our view, or when we call up their ideas into our minds by paintings tatues, descriptions or any the like occasion". Therefore, according to Addison, the pleasures of imagination are of two kinds.
a) primary or those which entirely proceed from such objects as are before our eyes, and,
b) secondary ones, which flow from the ideas of visible objects when the objects are not actually before the eye, but are called up in our memory, or formed into agreeable visions of things that are either absent or fictitious.
It is only the secondary pleasures of imagination that are aroused by works of art or literature. As we know, the copy of an object is always more appealing than the original. The copy is free from any defects or short comings that may be found in the original. It is natural for imagination to form the image of the ideal. Imagination gives an aesthetic picture of the real, and therefore it is more appealing and delightful.
