Indeed, the Church itself, while insisting on the distinction between the image and the object of the image, and denying that the worship is paid to the image, has at the same time made at least an indirect admission of the truth, by itself declaring the sacredness of the image. But the ultimate, highest principle of image-worship is the worship of the Image of God in God. Both to inward and outward contemplation the representation of Christ, the Image of God, was the image of images. The images of the saints are only optical multiplications of one and the same image. Connected with the nature of the image is another definition of the second Person, namely, that he is the Word of God.
Words are a result of the imagination.
Sleepers who dream vividly and invalids who are delirious speak. The power of speech is a poetic talent. Brutes do not speak because they have no poetic faculty. And in the present day the common people still believe that it is possible to bewitch men by mere words. Simply from this, that words themselves are only a result of the imagination, and hence have the effect of a narcotic on man, imprison him under the power of the imagination.