ising,
extraordinary thoughts, known of no other men (the symbolists and
decadents that flourish at the present time in various countries of
Europe and America, who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they are
preparing the esthetics of the future). It must be here admitted that
there exists an altogether special manner of _feeling_, dependent on
temperament at first, which many cultivate and refine as though it were
a precious rarity. There lies the true source of their invention.
Doubtless, to assert this pertinently, it would be necessary to
establish the direct relations between their physical and psychical
constitution and that of their work; to note even the particular states
at the moment of the creative act. To me at least, it seems evident that
the novelty, the strangeness of combinations, through its deep
subjective character, indicates an emotional rather than an intellectual
origin. Let us merely add that these abnormal manifestations of the
creative imagination belong to the province of pathology rather than to
that of psychology.

Association by contrast is, from its very nature, vague, arbitrary,
indeterminate. It rests, in truth, on an essentially subjective and
fleeting conception, that of contrariety, which it is almost impossible
to delimit scientifically; for, most often, contraries exist only by and
for us. We know that this form of association is not primary and
irreducible. It is brought down by some to contiguity, by most others to
resemblance. These two views do not seem to me irreconcilable. In
association by contrast we may distinguish two layers,--the one,
superficial, consists of contiguity: all of us have in memory associated
couples, such as large-small, rich-poor, high-low, right-left, etc.,
which result from repetition and habit; the other, deep, is resemblance;
_contrast exists only where a common measure between two terms is
possible_. As Wundt remarks, a wedding may be compared to a burial (the
union and separation of a couple), but not to a toothache. There is
contrast between two colors, contrast between sounds, but not between a
sound and a color, at least in that there may not be a common basis to
which we may relate them, as in the previously given instances of
"colored" sound. In association by contrast, there are conscious
elements opposed to one another, and below, an unconscious element,
resemblance,--not clearly and logically perceived, but felt--that evokes
and relates the c