dition to the work of observing material reality, there is a
creative work which lifts man up from earth and transports him into a
higher world which every soul may attain, within its individual
limits.

Yet no one can say that man _creates_ artistic products out of
nothing. What is called _creation_ is in reality a composition, a
construction raised upon a _primitive material_ of the mind, which
must be collected from the environment by means of the senses. This is
the general principle summed up in the ancient axiom: _Nihil est in
intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensa_ (There is nothing in the
intellect which was not first in the senses). We are unable to
"imagine" things which do not actually present themselves to our
senses; even language would be lacking to us to explain things lying
beyond those customary limits by which our consciousness is bounded.
The imagination of Michelangelo was unable to picture God otherwise
than as a venerable old man with a white beard. When we try to imagine
the eternal torments of hell, we talk of fire; we think of Paradise as
a place of light. Those born blind and deaf can form no definite idea
of sensations they have never been able to perceive. It is well known
that persons blind from their birth imagine colors by comparing them
to sounds: for instance, they imagine red as the sound of a trumpet,
blue as the sweet music of the violin. The deaf, when they read
descriptions of delicious music, imagine the classic beauty of a
painted picture. The temperaments of poets and artists are
pre-eminently sensorial. And all the senses do not contribute in equal
measure to give a type to the individual imagination; but certain
senses are often predominant. Musicians are auditive, and are inclined
to describe the world from the sounds it conveys to them; the warbling
of the nightingale in the silence of a wood; the patter of the rain in
the solitude of the country-side, may be as springs of inspiration for
great musical composers; and some of them, describing a tract of
country, will dwell only on its silences and noises. Others again,
whose susceptibilities are predominantly visual, are impressed by the
forms and colors of things. Or it may be the motion, the flexuosity,
the impetus of things; the tactile impressions of softness and
harshness, which make up the descriptive content of imaginative types
in whom the tactile and muscular sensations predominate.

There are persons who have ha