Poets

Joseph Addison, "The Pleasures of the Imagination" in The Spectator, No. 416, July 2, 1712

It is possible this defect of imagination [the inability to get one's brain around the very, very large or the very, very tiny] may not be in the soul itself but as it acts in conjunction with the body. Perhaps there may not be room in the brain for such a variety of impression, or the animal spirits may be incapable of figuring them in such a manner as is necessary to excite so very large or minute ideas. However it be, we may well suppose that beings of a higher nature very much excel us in this respect, as it is probable the soul of man will be infinitely more perfect hereafter in this faculty-as well as in all the rest-insomuch that perhaps the imagination will be able to keep pace with understanding and to form in itself distinct ideas of all the different modes and quantities of space.

The body and the soul are seen as distinct, though influential on each other. The soul might have the capacity to take in the "world" or the "atom" if it weren't for the body's limitations getting in the way. Perfection might come in the form of the body's decreased influence on the soul or, more interestingly, as the finer fusion of body and soul. The animal spirits must better transport feeling and accommodate sensation if the imagination is to be given free reign. Imagination becomes a component of evolution opening up the possibility of, again, nationalist or classed ideas about who can ..