[26] Is it possible that this would explain the fact of Aristotle lecturing to his pupils while walking about, thus giving the name "peripatetic" to his school and system? (Tr.)
[27] _Die Phantasie als Grundprincip der Weltprocesses_, München, 1877. For other details on the subject, see Appendix C.
[28] A passage from Chateaubriand (cited by Paulhan, _Rev. Philos._, March, 1898, p. 237) is a typical description of the situation: "The warmth of my (adolescent) imagination, my shyness, and solitude, caused me, instead of casting myself on something without, to fall back upon myself. Wanting a real object, I evoked through the power of my desires, a phantom, which thenceforth never left me; I made a woman, composed of all the women that I had already seen. That charming idea followed me everywhere, though invisible; I conversed with her as with a real being; she would change according to my frenzy. Pygmalion was less enamored of his statue."
[29] Cabanis, _Rapports du Physique et du Moral_, édition Peisse, pp. 248-249, an anecdote that he relates after Buffon. Analogous, but less clear, facts may also be found in Moreau de Tours' _Psychologie morbide_.
The psychological nature of the imagination would be very imperfectly known were we limited to the foregoing analytical study. Indeed, all creation whatever, great or small, shows an organic character; it implies a unifying, synthetic principle. Every one of the three factors--intellectual, emotional, unconscious--works not as an isolated fact on its own account; they have no worth save through their union, and no signification save through their common bearing. This principle of unity, which all invention demands and requires, is at one time intellectual in nature, i.e., as a fixed idea; at another time emotional, i.e., as a fixed emotion or passion. These terms--fixed idea, fixed emotion--are somewhat absolute and require restrictions and reservations, which will be made in what follows.
The distinction between the two is not at all absolute. Every fixed idea is supported and maintained by a need, a tendency, a desire; i.e., by an affective element. For it is idle fancy to believe in the _persistence_ of an idea which, by hypothesis, would be a purely intellectual state, cold and dry. The principle of unity in this form naturally predominates in certain kinds of creation: in the practical imagination wherein the end is clear, where images are direct substitutes for things, where invention is subjected to strict conditions under penalty of visible and palpable check; in the scientific and metaphysical imagination, which works with concepts and is subject to the laws of rational logic.