with her as with a real being; she would change according to my
frenzy. Pygmalion was less enamored of his statue."

[29] Cabanis, _Rapports du Physique et du Moral_, edition Peisse,
pp. 248-249, an anecdote that he relates after Buffon. Analogous,
but less clear, facts may also be found in Moreau de Tours'
_Psychologie morbide_.

CHAPTER V

THE PRINCIPLE OF UNITY

The psychological nature of the imagination would be very imperfectly
known were we limited to the foregoing analytical study. Indeed, all
creation whatever, great or small, shows an organic character; it
implies a unifying, synthetic principle. Every one of the three
factors--intellectual, emotional, unconscious--works not as an isolated
fact on its own account; they have no worth save through their union,
and no signification save through their common bearing. This principle
of unity, which all invention demands and requires, is at one time
intellectual in nature, i.e., as a fixed idea; at another time
emotional, i.e., as a fixed emotion or passion. These terms--fixed
idea, fixed emotion--are somewhat absolute and require restrictions and
reservations, which will be made in what follows.

The distinction between the two is not at all absolute. Every fixed idea
is supported and maintained by a need, a tendency, a desire; i.e., by
an affective element. For it is idle fancy to believe in the
_persistence_ of an idea which, by hypothesis, would be a purely
intellectual state, cold and dry. The principle of unity in this form
naturally predominates in certain kinds of creation: in the practical
imagination wherein the end is clear, where images are direct
substitutes for things, where invention is subjected to strict
conditions under penalty of visible and palpable check; in the
scientific and metaphysical imagination, which works with concepts and
is subject to the laws of rational logic.

Every fixed emotion should realize itself in an idea or image that gives
it body and systematizes it, without which it remains diffuse; and all
affective states can take on this permanent form which makes a unified
principle of them. The simple emotions (fear, love, joy, sorrow, etc.),
the complex or derived emotions (religious, esthetic, intellectual
ideas) may equally monopolize consciousness in their own interests.

We thus see that these two terms--fixed idea, fixed emotion--are almost
equivalent, for they both imply inseparable elements, and serve only to