CHAPTER II
THE DIFFLUENT IMAGINATION
I
The diffluent imagination is another general form, but one that is completely opposed to the foregoing. It consists of vaguely-outlined, indistinct images that are evoked and joined according to the least rigorous modes of association. It presents, then, two things for our consideration—the nature of the images and of their associations.
(1) It employs neither the clear-cut, concrete, reality-penetrated images of the plastic imagination, nor the semi-schematic representations of the rational imagination, but those midway in that ascending and descending scale extending from perception to conception. This determination, however, is insufficient, and we can make it more precise. Analysis, indeed, discovers a certain class of ill-understood images, which I call emotional abstractions, and which are the proper material for the diffluent imagination. These images are reduced to certain qualities or attributes of things, taking the place of the whole, and chosen from among the others for various reasons, the origin of which is affective. We shall comprehend their nature better through the following comparison:
Intellectual or rational abstraction results from the choice of a fundamental, or at least principal, character, which becomes the substitute for all the rest that is omitted. Thus, extension, resistance, or impenetrability, come to represent, through simplification and abbreviation, what we call "matter."
Emotional abstraction, on the other hand, results from the permanent or temporary predominance of an emotional state. Some aspect of a thing, essential or not, comes into relief, solely because it is in direct relation to the disposition of our sensibility, with no other preoccupation; a quality, an attribute is spontaneously, arbitrarily selected because it impresses us at the given instant—in the final analysis, because it somehow pleases or displeases us. The images of this class have an "impressionist" mark. They are abstractions in the strict sense—i.e., extracts from and simplifications of the sensory data. They act less through a direct influence than by evoking, suggesting, whispering; they permit a glance, a passing glimpse: we may justly call them crepuscular or twilight ideas.
(2) As for the forms of association, the relations linking these images, they do not depend so much on the order and connections of things as on the changing dispositions of the mind. They have a very marked subjective character. Some depend on the intellectual factor; the most usual are based on chance, on distant and vacillating analogies—further down, even on assonance and alliteration. Others depend on the affective factor and are ruled by the disposition of the moment: association by contrast, especially those alike in emotional basis, which have been previously studied. (First Part, [Chapter II].)