ring such a sure and tenacious
external vision (portraits executed from memory, exact remembrance of
faces at the end of twenty years, as in the case of Gavarni, etc.[81]),
and limiting ourselves merely to the usual, the plastic arts demand an
observant imagination. For the majority of men the concrete image of a
face, a form, a color, usually remains vague and fleeting; "red, blue,
black, white, tree, animal, head, mouth, arm, etc., are scarcely more
than words, symbols expressing a rough synthesis. For the painter, on
the other hand, images have a very high precision of details, and what
he sees beneath the words or in real objects are analyzed facts,
positive elements of perception and movement."[82]

The role of tactile-motor images is not insignificant. There has often
been cited the instance of sculptors who, becoming blind, have
nevertheless been able to fashion busts of close resemblance to the
original. This is memory of touch and of the muscular sense, entirely
equivalent to the visual memory of the portrait painters mentioned
above. Practical knowledge of design and modeling--i.e., of contour and
relief--though resulting from natural or acquired disposition, depends
on cerebral conditions, the development of definite sensory-motor
regions and their connections; and on psychological conditions--the
acquisition and organization of appropriate images. "We learn to paint
and carve," wrote a contemporary painter, "as we do sewing, embroidery,
sawing, filing and turning." In short, like all manual labor requiring
associated and combined acts.

2. Another form of plastic imagination uses words as means for evoking
vivid and clear impressions of sight, touch, movement; it is the poetic
or literary form. Of it we find in Victor Hugo a finished type. As all
know, we need only open his works at hazard to find a stream of
glittering images. But what is their nature? His recent biographers,
guided by contemporary psychology, have well shown that they always
paint scenes or movements. It is unnecessary to give proofs. Some facts
have a broader range and throw light upon his psychology. Thus we are
told that "he never dictates or rhymes from memory and composes only in
writing, for he believes that writing has its own features, and he
wants to _see the words_. Theophile Gautier, who knows and understands
him so well, says: 'I also believe that in the sentence we need most of
all an _ocular_ rhythm. A book is made to be rea