n, I purposely digress in order
to dwell on this point: that the esthetic imagination has no essential
character belonging exclusively to it, and that it differs from other
forms (scientific, mechanical, etc.) only in its materials and in its
end, not in its primary nature.

On the whole, the plastic imagination could be summed up in the
expression, _clearness in complexity_. It always preserves the mark of
its original source--i.e., in the creator and those disposed to enjoy
and understand him it tends to approach the clearness of perception.

Would it be improper to consider as a variety of the genus a mode of
representation that could be expressed as _clearness in simplicity_? It
is the dry and rational imagination. Without depreciating it we may say
that it is rather a condition of imaginative poverty. We hold with
Fouillee that the average Frenchman furnishes a good example of it. "The
Frenchman," says he, "does not usually have a very strong imagination.
His internal vision has neither the hallucinative intensity nor the
exuberant fancy of the German and Anglo-Saxon mind; it is an
intellectual and distant view rather than a sensitive resurrection or an
immediate contact with, and possession of, the things themselves.
Inclined to deduce and construct, our intellect excels less in
representing to itself real things than in discovering relations between
possible or necessary things. In other words, it is a logical and
combining imagination that takes pleasure in what has been termed the
abstract view of life. The Chateaubriands, Hugos, Flauberts, Zolas, are
exceptional with us. We reason more than we imagine."[85]

Its psychological constitution is reducible to two elements: slightly
concrete images, _schemas_ approaching general ideas; for their
association, relations predominantly rational, more the products of the
logic of the intellect than of the logic of the feelings. It lacks the
sudden, violent shock of emotion that gives brilliancy to images, making
them arise and grouping them in unforeseen combinations. It is a form of
invention and construction that is more the work of reason than of
imagination proper.

Consequently, is it not paradoxical to relate it to plastic imagination,
as species to genus? It would be idle to enter upon a discussion of the
subject here without attempting a classification; let us merely note the
likenesses and differences. Both are above all objective--the first,
because it is s