TEE THEORY OF STYLE 83 



paninient. Needless to say, the kinesthetic image is similarly accom- 

 panied and an extraordinary power of introspection would be required 

 to observe a distinction. 



The close association between the motor sensation and the affective 

 phases of consciousness betrays itself in the terms used to indicate the 

 latter. The following may be cited : emotion, Gemiitsbewegung, com- 

 motion, repulsion, aversion, Abstossung, agitation, Unruhe, moving, 

 stirring, aufregend, ruhrend, erschutterend and emouvant. Even 

 touching and touchant (duco) might be added, though in them as in 

 das Gefuhl, le sentiment and feeling, the tactual predominates over the 

 kinesthetic as the fundamental idea. The fact, however, can not be 

 ignored that feel and toucher mean to pass the hand over and have con- 

 sequently an important motor implication. 



It is not then surprising to hear it maintained that the kinesthetic 

 (strain and relaxation) is a necessary ingredient, not certainly of feel- 

 ing-tone, which, though it depends upon sensory and ideational activi- 

 ties, can not be analyzed into motor elements, but of the complex emo- 

 tional state, of which the feeling tone, or affection, is the characteristic 

 feature. Whether the physiological complex that gives an emotion its 

 special value can be analyzed into merely three pairs of elements, strain 

 and relaxation, exaltation and depression, the agreeable and the dis- 

 agreeable, or whether other ingredients might be mentioned, as the 

 secretions and excretions and the cerebral circulation, the part played 

 by the first pair is undoubted. In fact from the genetic point of view 

 it might have been anticipated that the sthenic emotions would be 

 accompanied by muscle strain and the asthenic by a corresponding re- 

 laxation; so much of the physiology of both fear and anger can be 

 explained in terms of preparedness for action. 



The value of such a view for the present study is that it enables us 

 to trace the relation of the emotions to the imagination. The kin- 

 esthetic element forms, on the one hand, part of that physiological com- 

 plex which gives to emotion color and zest, while on the other hand it 

 supplies material for imaginative elaboration and renders more vivid 

 imagery from other sensory sources. In fact it is solely the presence of 

 this element of feeling that distinguishes the imagination from the 

 understanding. The image, the raw material of the one, differs from 

 the concept, the raw material of the other, just in that vividness which 

 an accompanying kinesthetic sensation is able to impart. Moreover, a 

 ' critical examination of an imaginative masterpiece will reveal, that a 

 poet is guided by his feeling in the choice of subject, in his selection 

 and rejection of the aspects of the theme which are to receive emphasis, 

 in his use of phraseology and epithets — in fact, in the employment of all 

 the devices of poetic art. The conveyance of a mood is the substance of 

 art. For this contribution to truth we stand indebted to an emotional- 



