become practical--just as the
soul, according to spiritualism, must bend to the necessities of the
body, to be at the same time the servant of, and served by, the bodily
organs.

According to general opinion the great imaginers are found only in the
first two classes, which is, in the strict sense of the word, true; in
the full sense of the word false. As long as it remains "outline," or
even "fixed," the constructive imagination can reign as supreme
mistress. Objectified, it still rules, but shares its power with
competitors; it avails nought without them, they can do nothing without
it. What deceives us is the fact that we see it no longer in the open.
Here the imaginative stroke resembles those powerful streams of water
that must be imprisoned in a complicated network of canals and
ramifications varying in shape and in diameter before bursting forth in
multiple jets and in liquid architecture.[148]

II

THE IMAGINATIVE TYPE.

Let us try now, by way of conclusion, to present to the reader a picture
of the whole of the imaginative life in all its degrees.

If we consider the human mind principally under its intellectual
aspect--i.e., insofar as it knows and thinks, deducting its emotions
and voluntary activity--the observation of individuals distinguishes
some very clear varieties of mentality.

First, those of a "positive" or realistic turn of mind, living chiefly
on the external world, on what is perceived and what is immediately
deducible therefrom--alien or inimical to vain fancy; some of them flat,
limited, of the earth earthy; others, men of action, energetic but
limited by real things.

Second, abstract minds, "quintessence abstractors," with whom the
internal life is dominant in the form of combinations of concepts. They
have a schematic representation of the world, reduced to a hierarchy of
general ideas, noted by symbols. Such are the pure mathematicians, the
pure metaphysicians. If these two tendencies exist together, or, as
happens, are grafted one on the other, without anything to
counterbalance them, the abstract spirit attains its perfect form.

Midway between these two groups are the imaginers in whom the internal
life predominates in the form of combinations of images, which fact
distinguishes them clearly from the abstractors. The former alone
interest us, and we shall try to trace this imaginative type in its
development from the normal or average stage to the moment when
ever-growing ex