84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



istic esthetic. Now it must be added that this conveyance of a mood 

 is just the function of the artistic imagination, as can be illustrated by 

 an investigation of a poetic treatment of historical material. All addi- 

 tions, all subtractions, character-groupings, emphasis, subordination, 

 retardation and precipitation of the events of the plot, local color and 

 diction — everything that makes the finished product a work of the 

 imagination — is brought about through the selective power of the mood 

 to be conveyed. Painting would furnish similar examples of the work- 

 ing of the imagination. The feeling of exuberant exultation interprets 

 for me Bocklin's " Im Spiele der Wellen " — the grotesque forms, the 

 color scheme, every tint and shade, the atmosphere, every detail. Again, 

 the feeling of dauntless resolution is the key to Diirer's " Eitter, Tod 

 und Teufel." From the point of view of the mood to be conveyed noth- 

 ing in the picture seems superfluous or irrelevant. The feeling guides 

 the imagination of artist and connoisseur. 



The view here maintained of the interdependence of the artistic 

 imagination, the feelings and the kinesthetic elements of consciousness 

 finds further confirmation when we consider esthetic appreciation as 

 accompanied by a sympathetic imputation of our states of conscious- 

 ness to the object contemplated, whether this be a part of nature or a 

 work of art. This ascription of our motor states lies at the basis of 

 personification and dictates the terms of imaginative description. 

 Columns and spires and mountains are felt to rise majestically, or the 

 headland frowns with beetling brows, the landscape or the sea smiles, 

 and the sun laughs a pitiless laugh. It is a commonplace of psychology 

 that the imaginative use of terms like sweet, bitter and sour is ex- 

 plained by the similarity of the physiological concomitants of certain 

 affective states and of certain gustatory sensations. Of these similar 

 concomitants the kinesthetic element constitutes the important feature. 

 A sudden grief that we would regret and cast from us is bitter, months 

 of deferred hope and suspended activity the poet describes as sour. 

 That this sympathetic imputation of our own states of consciousness to 

 the object contemplated involves, not merely imaginative and kines- 

 thetic elements, but also an emotional element, is best indicated per- 

 haps by the German word Einfilhlung. This term expresses far better 

 than imputation, or inner imitation, or illusion, or conscious self-de- 

 ception, the attitude of the mind at the moment of esthetic apprecia- 

 tion. I ascribe its superiority to its recognition of the feelings as the 

 basis of artistic satisfaction. 



The close relation between the poetic imagination and the feelings 

 is also seen when we consider that conditions that reduce to a minimum 

 the perceptions, and the activities of the critical understanding, arouse 

 both the feelings and the imagination. In dreams, in reveries, in 

 visions of the night, at twilight, upon vague, obscure, ambiguous, sen- 



