312 SOPHIA BRYANT : (2) Second, though probably not independent, is the con- trast of aesthetic and kinetic in prevalent habits of intellectual life. One is deeply conscious, the other full of intellectual activity. In the first case, ideas are very vivid, swift enough in impression, but slowly formed, and their connexions are much less stable than themselves. The flame of conscious- ness burns strong and bright, but there is little of the lightning flash from point to point. This is the seeing, hearing, deeply-feeling mind, of perceptions rich in variety and colour, of a musing fulness and intensity of life. Such a one is not quick of wit : neither in logic nor in fancy does his intellect show high pace. Nor is he apt at the manifold suggestiveness of thought. An experience is itself to him so vividly that it does not suggest other experiences so much. His thought is deeply conscious, not aptly associative. And this, whether he be broadly imaginative or not. Breadth of imagination, whether manifested in sound com- mon sense, in far-reaching imagery or in width of thought, would seem to depend on structure of brain, rather than on quality of the centres generally. The aesthetic mind as here conceived may be broad or narrow in its experiences, may be concentrated or expansive, complex or simple, in its momentary states. Its characteristic is apart from these varieties, and consists in the full flush and the correlative unsuggestiveiiess of each experience. In the opposite type this characteristic is reversed. The full flush of a deep sensibility is absent, but the experience flows over readily in suggestions: memory, imagination, intelligence play the major part in even those perceptions that lie nearest to the sense. In the extreme type the mental manifestation in all its parts is very thin. Though it echoes so widely or rather because it does there is very little body or depth of consciousness in it. Hence ensues an effect of cleverness that yet leaves no impression of weight or wisdom. Associations of thought are swift and accurate along habitual lines, fancy is apt enough, logic sound, but, since the depths of possible consciousness remain untouched, all deeper analogies are missed, and more especially there is a total lack of those deep emotional associations on which depend, though in different ways, the Poetry of Imagination, the Unity of Thought and the Practical Wisdom of Social Life. Just as excessive assthesis implies the stagnation of thought, so excessive kinesis implies the starvation of feeling, and hence an incapacity for passion and purpose which, amidst much intellectual activity, shows itself as indifference to the Ends of Thought.
