Thus its general characters are easy of determination. First and foremost, it makes use of visual images; then of motor images; lastly, in practical invention, of tactile images. In a word, the three groups of images present to a great extent the character of externality and objectivity. The clearness of form of these three groups proceeds from their origin, because they arise from sensation well determined in space--sight, movement, touch. Plastic imagination depends most on spatial conditions. We shall see that its opposite, diffluent imagination, is that which depends least upon that factor, or is most free from it. Among these naturally objective elements the plastic imagination chooses the most objective, which fact gives its creations an air of reality and life.
The second characteristic is inferiority of the affective element; it appears only intermittently and is entirely blotted out before sensory impression. This form of the creative imagination, coming especially from sensation, aims especially at sensation. Thus it is rather superficial, greatly devoid of that internal mark that comes from feeling.
But if it chance that both sensory and affective elements are equal in power; if there is at the same time intense vision adequate to reality, and profound emotion, violent shock, then there arise extraordinary imaginative personages, like Shakespeare, Carlyle, Michelet. It is needless to describe this form of imagination, excellent pen-pictures of which have been given by the critics;[79] let us merely note that its psychology reduces itself to an alternately ascending and descending movement between the two limiting points of perception and idea. The ascending process assigns to inanimate objects life, desires and feelings. Thus Michelet: "The great streams of the Netherlands, _tired_ with their very long course, _perish_ as though from _weariness_ in the _unfeeling_ ocean."[80] Elsewhere, the great folio begets the octavo, "which becomes the parent of the small volume, of booklets, of ephemeral pamphlets, invisible spirits flying in the night, creating under the very eyes of tyrants the circulation of liberty." The descending process materializes abstractions, gives them body, makes them flesh and bone; the Middle Ages become "a poor child, torn from the bowels of Christianity, born amidst tears, grown up in prayer and revery, in anguish of heart, dying without achieving anything." In this dazzle of images there is a momentary return to primitive animism.