on, subject to
any law?--It passes through two stages separated by a
critical phase.--Period of autonomy; critical period; period
of definite constitution. Two cases: decay or transformation
through logical form, through deviation.--Subsidiary law of
increasing complexity.--Historical verification. 167

THIRD PART.

THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF IMAGINATION.

PRELIMINARY.

The need of a concrete study.--The varieties of the creative
imagination, analogous to the varieties of character. 179

CHAPTER I.

THE PLASTIC IMAGINATION.

It makes use of clear images, well determined in space, and
of associations of objective relations.--Its external
character.--Inferiority of the affective element.--Its
principal manifestations: in the arts dealing with form; in
poetry (transformation of sonorous into visual images); in
myths with clear outline; in mechanical invention.--The dry
and rational imagination its elements. 184

CHAPTER II.

THE DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION.

It makes use of vague images linked according to the least
rigorous modes of association. Emotional abstractions; their
nature.--Its characteristic of inwardness.--Its principal
manifestations: revery, the romantic spirit, the chimerical
spirit; myths and religious conceptions, literature and the
fine arts (the symbolists), the class of the marvelous and
fantastic.--Varieties of the diffluent imagination: first,
numerical imagination; its nature; two principal forms,
cosmogonic and scientific conceptions; second, musical
imagination, the type of the affective imagination. Its
characteristics; it does not develop save after an interval
of time.--Natural transposition of events in
musicians.--Antagonism between true musical imagination and
plastic imagination. Inquiry and facts on the subject.--Two
great types of imagination. 195

CHAPTER III.

MYSTIC IMAGINATION.

Its elements; its special characteristics.--Thinking
symbolically.--Nature of this symbolism.--The mystic changes
concrete images into symbolic images.--Their obscurity;
whence it arises.--Extraordinary abuse of analogy.--Mystic
labor on letters, numbers, etc.--Nature and extent of the
belief accompanying this form of imagination: it is
unconditional and permanent.--The mystic conception of the
world a general symbolism.--Mystic imagination in r