eling, in gestures, cries, interjections, change of tone: it
finds its complete and classic expression in music. The symbolists want
to transfer the role of sound to words, to make of them the instrument
for translating and suggesting emotion through sound alone: words have
to act not as signs but as sounds: they are "musical notes in the
service of an impassioned psychology."

All this, indeed, concerns only imagination expressing itself in words;
but we know that the symbolic school has applied itself to the plastic
arts, to treat them in its own way. The difference, however, is in the
vesture that the esthetic ideal assumes. The pre-Raphaelites have
attempted, by effacing forms, outlines, semblances, colors, "to cause
things to appear as mere sources of emotion," in a word, to _paint_
emotions.

To sum up--In this form of the diffluent imagination the emotional
factor exercises supreme authority.

May the type of imagination, the chief manifestations of which we have
just enumerated, be considered as identical with the idealistic
imagination? This question is similar to that asked in the preceding
chapter, and permits the same answer. In idealistic art, doubtless, the
material element furnished in perception (form, color, touch, effort) is
minimized, subtilized, sublimated, refined, so as to approach as nearly
as possible to a purely internal state. By the nature of its favorite
images, by its preference for vague associations and uncertain
relations, it presents all the characteristics of diffluent imagination;
but the latter covers a much broader field: it is the genus of which the
other is a species. Thus, it would be erroneous to regard the fantastic
imagination as idealistic; it has no claim to the term: on the contrary,
it believes itself adapted for practical work and acts in that
direction.

In addition, it must be recognized that were we to make a complete
review of all the forms of esthetic creation, we should frequently be
embarrassed to classify them, because there are among them, as in the
case of characters, mixed or composite forms. Here, for example, are two
kinds seemingly belonging to the diffluent imagination which, however,
do not permit it to completely include them.

(a) The "wonder" class (fairy-tales, the Thousand and One Nights,
romances of chivalry, Ariosto's poem, etc.) is a survival of the mythic
epoch, when the imagination is given free play without control or check;
whereas, in the