REASONS FOR HESITATION. 193 



Day To clear away 



Twilight To blind 



Gloom To cloud 



those actions, processes, or operations which take place or 

 are produced in the outer world, physical or material, and in 

 the inner world, intellectual or moral. 



Were your pretended " image " the result of purely personal 

 impressions, all persons are not equally apt in apprehending 

 those fictitious relations which are the food of poetry, were 

 it. in a word, no more than an individual conception, and, 

 therefore, eminently variable, I should not hesitate to accept 

 your opinion : we should simply be discussing what are called, 

 in scholastic language, the individual sense (sens propre) and 

 the imaginative sense (sens figure). But there exists upon this 

 point an unanimous and universal agreement : all languages, 

 living or dead, attest it; it embraces the aggregate of the 

 members of the human family. 



This is the first point which induces me to doubt the legiti- 

 macy of the proposed explanation. But I am confirmed in 

 my hesitation by numerous other facts. 



Let us emerge from the domain of rhetoric to enter that of 

 experimental physiology and psychology. Too powerful a 

 light blinds the organs of seeing. No mortal eye, unless with 

 the aid of artificial appliances, can gaze upon the sun, the great 

 source of light. If the vision is to act clearly, we must pro- 

 ceed step by step. If from a very light apartment we pass 

 rapidly, and without transition, into a darkened room, or vice 



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