We
cannot be much interested in, or much moved by, the things we do not
see. Of public affairs each of us sees very little, and therefore,
they remain dull and unappetizing, until somebody, with the makings of
an artist, has translated them into a moving picture. Thus the
abstraction, imposed upon our knowledge of reality by all the
limitations of our access and of our prejudices, is compensated. Not
being omnipresent and omniscient we cannot see much of what we have to
think and talk about. Being flesh and blood we will not feed on words
and names and gray theory. Being artists of a sort we paint pictures,
stage dramas and draw cartoons out of the abstractions.
Or, if possible, we find gifted men who can visualize for us. For
people are not all endowed to the same degree with the pictorial
faculty. Yet one may, I imagine, assert with Bergson that the
practical intelligence is most closely adapted to spatial
qualities. [Footnote: _Creative Evolution_, Chs. III, IV.] A
"clear" thinker is almost always a good visualizer. But for that same
reason, because he is "cinematographic," he is often by that much
external and insensitive. For the people who have intuition, which is
probably another name for musical or muscular perception, often
appreciate the quality of an event and the inwardness of an act far
better than the visualizer. They have more understanding when the
crucial element is a desire that is never crudely overt, and appears
on the surface only in a veiled gesture, or in a rhythm of speech.
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