In a word, insofar as it is permissible in psychology to make use of general formulas—and with the proviso that they apply to most, not to all cases—we may say that during the working of the musical imagination the appearance of visual images is the exception; that when this form of imagination is weak, the appearance of images is the rule.
Furthermore, this result of observation is altogether in accord with logic. There is an irreducible antithesis between affective imagination, the characteristic of which is interiority, and visual imagination, basically objective. Intellectual language—speech—is an arrangement of words that stand for objects, qualities, relations, extracts of things: in order to be understood they must call up in consciousness the corresponding images. Emotional language—music—is an appropriate ordering of successive or simultaneous sounds, of melodies and harmonies that are signs of affective states: in order to be understood, they must call up in consciousness the corresponding affective modifications. But, in the non-musically inclined, the evocative power is small—sonorous combinations excite only superficial and unstable internal states. The exterior excitation, that of the sounds, follows the line of least resistance, and acting according to the psychic nature of the individual, tends to arouse objective images, pictures, visual representations, well or ill adapted.
To sum up: In contrast to sensorial imagination, which has its origin without, affective imagination begins within. The stuff of its creation is found in the mental states enumerated above, and in their innumerable combinations, which it expresses and fixes in language peculiar to itself, of which it has been able to make wonderful use. Taking it altogether, the only great division possible between the different types of imagination is perhaps reducible to this: To speak more exactly, there are exterior and interior imaginations. These two chapters have given a sketch of them. There now remains for us to study the less general forms of the creative power.
FOOTNOTES:
[86] See [Appendix E].
[87] Let us cite merely the case of Balzac who, says one of his biographers, "was always odd." He buys a property, in order to start a dairy there with "the best cows in the world," from which he expects to receive a net income of 3,000 francs. In addition, high-grade vegetable gardens, same income; vineyard, with Malaga plants, which should bring about 2,000 fr. He has the commune of Sèvres deed over to him a walnut tree, worth annually 2,000 francs to him, because all the townspeople dump their rubbish there. And so on, until at the end of four years he sees himself obliged to sell his domain for 3,000 francs, after spending on it thrice that sum.
[88] Usener, Götternamen, 1896.
[89] Nouveaux Essais de critique, p. 320.
[90] Or, as it has been expressed, "human qualities raised to their highest power." (Tr.)