Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/172

172 When the imagination is kept within bounds by the intellect it discovers many general truths. Even our senses are constantly deceiving us when uncontrolled by the judgment. This control is lacking in the insane and in brutes. A horse that shies at a piece of paper blown across its path is doubtless influenced by its imagination. Its primal instinct is self-preservation and the unusual object portends danger. An unaccustomed noise or smell often produces the same effect.

Fiction, including poetry, is generally the production of a kind of unsystematic meditation in which successive steps are not logically correlated. These steps are the result of association, or suggestion and reintegration. If they follow each other in strictly logical order they could exhibit but little variety, perhaps none at all. Often a word or an idea brings into the mind another idea or concept that has a merely accidental connection with it. The process can not be foreseen because it is not alike in any two individuals. Neither can it be retraced or repeated, which may always be done when a chain of reasoning is strictly scientific. It usually has no very definite purpose and is rarely based on definite knowledge. In fact, definite knowledge usually dissipates a state of mind that does not differ widely from delusion. "Poetry," says Wordsworth, "is emotion recollected in tranquility." The scientist always regards emotion as a disturbing factor. It prevents his seeing objects as they are. Emotion interferes with clearness of vision and distinctness of mental apprehension. It is wont to endow objects with qualities which they do not possess. There is a vast difference between a slight possession and a deep-seated and ineradicable prejudice; but every step from one toward the other, no matter how short, is a movement away from the truth. Most men are more emotional in early life than in later years because experience and reflection enable, and often constrain them, to see persons and things more nearly as they are. An emotional state of mind in its intenser form is usually called enthusiasm. Carlyle employs a semi-German word, Swarmery, as being more expressive. Under the influence of strong emotion almost every person becomes an enthusiast. But it is only men of genius who can produce this mental condition at will. Few persons can remain in the emotional state of mind for a long time because the commonplace affairs of the world demand frequent returns to the normal state. On the other hand, there are persons whose hopes and anticipations so persistently deceive them as to unfit them for the stern realities of this world. It is difficult even for genius to deal with conditions objectively, to envisage phenomena with the clear apprehension that its own personality is a disturbing factor. In persons endowed with a literary mentality there is developed the style of an author, that is, his individual mode of presenting his thoughts to the reader. Every author of note exhibits this characteristic. Hence it is generally possible for experts to divine the authorship of