Émile Chartier

“ In place therefore of believing, what is properly the folly of the imagination, that it is the object supposed which effects proof and produces the emotion, it is reasonable to think that it is the emotion which effects proof, and gives in this way sense and consistency to some impressions by themselves poorly determined. When one imagines a voice in the ticking of a clock, one still does not hear but a clock ticking, and the least attention assures us of it. ”

“ To say all, beauty has this privilege to exist. And when there would not be, to form this robust world, but one object in each genre, a beautiful edifice, a beautiful piece of furniture, a beautiful musical piece, a beautiful poem, a beautiful drawing, a beautiful statue, a beautiful portrait, it is not necessary for more of them that one be able to expose, by the universal relations that they suppose, these judgments without name. ”

“ Of such testifies the works of art, always singular and universal but bounded by these languages sung, designed, mimed, modelled or painted, of which the language articulated is so profoundly separated; the cry varied, the old signal, goes always to suspend the thought and to coordinate the efforts. This is why aesthetic, reduced to the instruments of eloquence, says so badly what the work of art says so well in its proper language. And eloquence does not even know but to speak of eloquence. ”

“ I desire only that the wisdom of days preserves you and preserves me from such dreams; but to believe a little too much of it, if you have them, nothing will preserve you. That to give the understanding that, as soon one pays attention to a dream, the passion turns us away from considering the true causes. ”

“ But it is useful to consider first in the imagination what is most evidently real, and which carries all the rest; to know on one hand the reactions of the body, so tyrannically felt, and on the other hand this deceiver judgment, so firmly supported on the emotions and afterwards looking for the images and waiting for them, often in vain. ”

“ As one can see in fear, where the effects of the imagination, if one is familiarized with them, holds first among those indubitable perceptions of the body proper, as contracture, trembling, heat and cold, beatings of the heart, strangling, and whereas the images of the supposed objects which would be the cause of those reactions are often completely undetermined and always vanishing, understand that the attention dissipates them and that they reform themselves as behind us. ”

“ This is not but the form of oratory which separates it from the others. In it and for it all idea is universal. And the common error is without doubt to not want to believe at all in the spirit, as the priests have caught a glimpse of it. For the universal does not prove itself at all; the one who wants to prove supposes always, and never attempts to prove, that his proof is univerally valid. What is general is the sole object of proof, and does not lead but to a practical agreement, meaning political by connection to the human order, and industrial by connection to the exterior order. ”

“ Disorder therefore in the body, error in the spirit, the one nourishes the other, there is the reality of the imagination, not without some visions of an instant, or indeed some perceptions badly controlled, of which it is necessary now to speak. ”

“ For example, noises touch us; a bell, a clock chime, a voice are heard and can be interpreted, therefore perceived although very badly. An odor, of the same. With regard to touch, it never ceases, by the weight of the body, by the heat and the cold, by the contact of clothing, from us to give to thinking. ”

“ And these forceful scriptures, which are temples, statues, designs, have kept this power to convert without proofs, in terminating the wanderings, as the harp of David would do for the mad king. Models for the written language which is not as yet fully object. It was being necessary therefore to bring back the articulated language to the conditions which effect a work to be universal and durable. And one can remark that the lightning flashes of beauty of true prose offers a truth without proofs, in the sense where beautiful music is without proofs and the Venus de Milo without proofs. ”

“ We are no more in the times when the fantastic creations of dreams were considered as the announcements of destiny. But it is not necessary at all to trust too much in the lights; and man has not so much changed that he can think without confusion of a dream which would have connection to his more lively affections, as of a sick friend or calumniator, or of an unfaithful woman, or of a son killed in combat. ”

“ I add that it is prudent to not too much at all believe oneself as soon as a strong passion or solely the passion to testify animates us. Let us return still to the example of fear, where the game of the imagination is powerful and the belief so strong, even when the power to evoke is uncertain and groping. ”

“ This is what always searches after all men who go thinking; but whatever desire that one has of it, the truth never reduces itself entirely to beauty. Also beauty is as a recompense, in other words the sole fact of the spirit possible. ”

“ And after the disordered and counteracted movements of the body have assured the false judgment, that I am in danger, or that this man scorns me, or that this town will be fatal to me, as soon as this judgment follows a new agitation resulting from actions commenced, retained, counteracted, as the same way it happens when the object is missed; and this agitation reanimates the emotion. Thus the judgment, if it does not find anything at all from the object finds at least some evidences; for the trembling and the flight does not cure me at all from the fear, all to the contrary. ”

“ It is of first importance to retrieve these domineering characters even in the case where this is, as one says, a sort of image or of vision or of hearing that is fantastic which retains the attention and is fixed principally in the memory.
Considered under this aspect, imagination is mad and unruled by its nature. At first it is clear enough that the judgment and the tumult of the body continually react, the one on the other, as anxiety, fear, anger testify of it. ”

“ It turns out that by equality of rights one can make a settling of fortune, and that with a plan and some iron one can fabricate many times the same machine. But such successes do not content the spirit at all. ”

“ Or this other method, which recalls all doctrine to analytic exposure, suits all subjects, but I had noticed for a long time that, as soon as one wants to treat with aesthetics, the one doesn't present itself to the other, for here the choice is already made, and immovable, and what one would like to prove, to know that the work is beautiful, is affirmed without any doubt by the same work. If one would like to define beauty, it would be necessary to define it by these judgments immediate, assured, irrevocable ”

“ For, if one intends this word according to the usage, the imagination is not solely, nor even principally, a contemplative power of the spirit, but above all the error and the disorder entering in the spirit at the same time as the tumult of the body. ”

“ But, to go against the commonplaces, I say that it is necessary to reduce it as much as one can and to carry attention to other causes. Firstly that exterior objects still act on our senses during sleep which give place to some lazy perceptions. ”

“ There is some ambiguity, if one does not keep guard against it, in what one says of a strong imagination. Strong (it is necessary to understand it by its effects) which goes easily to malaise and even to malady, as fear shows it ”

“ I have been obligated to proceed otherwise regarding a directing idea no less important, that I have found in Descartes, but that the Prince of Extension has in no way approached regarding the present subject. I speak of imagination as a human function or power, but essentially defined by the mechanism and the affections of the human body. This important idea has certainly not been followed enough by those who have attempted to appropriately describe human nature without the spirit of system ”

“ A live hope, resent from the crowd to the crowd, was deforming their discourse, but to say that the hope was deforming also their perceptions, this is to say more than one knows. The psychology of our times will not recover at all from its principal error which is to have too much believed the madmen and the ill. ”

“ What is going to follow is on this way, and oriented by that, but intermediate, since it determines some species and not some individuals; and its middle is not but analoguous to beauty, whatever it leads there, for the end here pursued is to make to perceive this grand object in its systematic unity, not at all logical but real, by the force of the oppositions and of the singular characters of each species of work. The critic can not do more, and I warn you, reader, that this essay does still well less. If therefore a mute genius pushes you, take rather the plume or the paint-brush. ”

“ If one was reflecting on this, that the solitary thought does not take form but in the common expression, one would understand better the virtue of signs, of which any thought is never separable, and, by that last proposition, that a thought which is not common is not in any sense a thought. ”

“ If the reader considers in this prudent manner, as Descartes teaches us, perhaps he will perceive that the imagination has need of objects. Thus the arts show themselves already as remedies to reverie, always wandering and sorrowful. ”

“ It imports to recognize first, by a severe examination, that this power to evoke the appearances of absent objects does not go as far as one says it goes, that one does not believe it either, and in other terms, that the imagination fools us also about its own nature. ”

“ And this is here the only case where the observation can be free and without any precaution. For one knows well enough that the observer of the objects of nature like celestial movements or the fall of a body wanders from the question soon if he is not rigidly prepared. ”

“ The delerious state that one may also call sybilline, in the fever or in the paroxysm of the passions, is by itself eloquent, moving, contagious; this is one reason not to believe too quickly that the delirious see all that they describe. ”