hings for our
consideration--the nature of the images and of their associations.

(1) It employs neither the clear-cut, concrete, reality-penetrated
images of the plastic imagination, nor the semi-schematic
representations of the rational imagination, but those midway in that
ascending and descending scale extending from perception to conception.
This determination, however, is insufficient, and we can make it more
precise. Analysis, indeed, discovers a certain class of ill-understood
images, which I call emotional abstractions, and which are the proper
material for the diffluent imagination. These images are reduced to
certain qualities or attributes of things, taking the place of the
whole, and chosen from among the others for various reasons, the origin
of which is affective. We shall comprehend their nature better through
the following comparison:

Intellectual or rational abstraction results from the choice of a
fundamental, or at least principal, character, which becomes the
substitute for all the rest that is omitted. Thus, extension,
resistance, or impenetrability, come to represent, through
simplification and abbreviation, what we call "matter."

Emotional abstraction, on the other hand, results from the permanent or
temporary predominance of an emotional state. Some aspect of a thing,
essential or not, comes into relief, solely because it is in direct
relation to the disposition of our sensibility, with no other
preoccupation; a quality, an attribute is spontaneously, arbitrarily
selected because it impresses us at the given instant--in the final
analysis, because it somehow pleases or displeases us. The images of
this class have an "impressionist" mark. They are abstractions in the
strict sense--i.e., extracts from and simplifications of the sensory
data. They act less through a direct influence than by evoking,
suggesting, whispering; they permit a glance, a passing glimpse: we may
justly call them crepuscular or twilight ideas.

(2) As for the forms of association, the relations linking these images,
they do not depend so much on the order and connections of things as on
the changing dispositions of the mind. They have a very marked subjective
character. Some depend on the intellectual factor; the most usual are
based on chance, on distant and vacillating analogies--further down, even
on assonance and alliteration. Others depend on the affective factor and
are ruled by the disposition of the moment: ass