Imagination

n.	1.	The imagine-making power of the mind; the power to create or reproduce ideally an object of sense previously perceived; the power to call up mental imagines. Our simple apprehension of corporeal objects, if present, is sense; if absent, is imagination. - Glanvill. Imagination is of three kinds: joined with belief of that which is to come; joined with memory of that which is past; and of things present, or as if they were present. - Bacon.
	2.	The representative power; the power to reconstruct or recombine the materials furnished by direct apprehension; the complex faculty usually termed the plastic or creative power; the fancy. The imagination of common language - the productive imagination of philosophers - is nothing but the representative process plus the process to which I would give the name of the "comparative." - Sir W. Hamilton. The power of the mind to decompose its conceptions, and to recombine the elements of them at its pleasure, is called its faculty of imagination. - I. Taylor. The business of conception is to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived. But we have moreover a power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones together, so as to form new wholes of our creation. I shall employ the word imagination to express this power. - Stewart.
	3.	The power to recombine the materials furnished by experience or memory, for the accomplishment of an elevated purpose; the power of conceiving and expressing the ideal. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact . . . The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. - Shak.
	4.	A mental image formed by the action of the imagination as a faculty; a conception; a notion. The same power, which we should call fancy if employed on a production of a light nature, would be dignified with the title of imagination if shown on a grander scale. - C. J. Smith.

Noun	1.	imagination - the formation of a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and is not present to the senses; "popular imagination created a world of demons"; "imagination reveals what the world could be" Synonyms: imaginativeness, vision
	2.	imagination - the ability to form mental images of things or events; "he could still hear her in his imagination" Synonyms: imagery, imaging, mental imagery
	3.	imagination - the ability to deal resourcefully with unusual problems; "a man of resource" Synonyms: resourcefulness, resource

apparition, brainchild, bubble, chimera, creativity, delirium, eidolon, fantasque, fantasy, fiction, figment, hallucination, idle fancy, illusion, imagery, imaginativeness, imagining, ingenuity, insight, inspiration, insubstantial image, intelligence, inventiveness, maggot, make-believe, myth, phantasm, phantom, romance, sick fancy, thick-coming fancies, thinking, thought, trip, vapor, vision, visualization, whim, whimsy, wildest dreams, wit