1 IMAGINATION

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All men under the stimulus of the feelings that he enumerates become story in some very small degree because it is by these feelings that they are moved to express themselves most imaginatively. This can be seen by the language they use: in a state of excitement they will have recourse to metaphors, smiles, personification and exaggeration. Under the stress of some unfamiliar experience a child will take refuge in complete fantasy in an endeavor to express the intensity of its sensations. An adult in similar circumstances will tend quite unconsciously to use figurative language. The excitement sets the imagination to work and the pictorial power of the imagination in its turn provides the mind with the images as means to express sensations for which the language of everyday is inadequate.

The effect of excitement is so striking on the ordinary man, what will its effect be on the writer, artists? How will his imagination respond to sensations and spectacles that move him? The causes that stir the emotions of ordinary men and women have always spurred the poet to write poetry and the painter to paint. And as the effect of these emotions on the ordinary men is to make him see pictures and speak in images, so it is, with greater intensity, on the artist. This is the simplest effect of excitement on the writer and concerns only the style of his utterance-the speech not the substance. It is not hard to find examples of these modes of speech, imagery, personification and exaggeration, for these have always been poetic forms of speech and most imaginative writings abounds them.

In this art of creation there is another remarkable activity of imagination: it produces to the writer or painter all the raw materials stored in the chambers of the memory. Thus it is that childhood's feelings and symbols and all experiences of the adolescence, youth, manhood will be at the artist's disposal for the expression of his feelings and thoughts. That is why wide experiences is so important to an artist, so that the recesses of his memory shall be well stored. If a man feels the need to create and if his experience is narrow, then either he must create something limited, within the bounds of his experience or he must venture into realms unknown to him where he may as well lose his way.