Romantics such as Wordsworth and Coleridge knew that the imagination was as dangerous as dynamite, not only politically – the populace might have new, important but dissident ideas – but also inside an individual. The imagination can feel like disorder when it is, in fact, an illumination. There is no doubt that the imagination is hazardous, and should be; certain thoughts are combustible, and must be repressed or foreclosed. Good and evil, as in a bad film, must be kept separate. There are notions here that cannot be fully conceived of or thought, which must not fuse or develop. That is because the imagination can be anti-social. Plato wanted to ban art from his ideal state because it was fake, or “an imitation”, as he put it, and might overstimulate the populace. And we know, of course, that writers and artists throughout history have been attacked, censored and jailed for having thoughts or ideas that other people cannot bear to hear. From this point of view, the word is always risky. So it should be.