In order the better to comprehend the distinction between the three forms of imagination let us borrow for a moment the terminology of spiritualism or of the common dualism--merely as a means of explaining the matter clearly. The "outline" imagination is a soul without a body, a pure spirit, without determination in space. The "fixed" imagination is a soul or spirit surrounded by an almost immaterial sheath, like angels or demons, genii, shadows, the "double" of savages, the _peresprit_ of spiritualists, etc. The _objectified_ imagination is soul and body, a complete organization after the pattern of living people; the ideal is incarnated, but it must undergo transformation, reductions and adaptations, in order that it may become practical--just as the soul, according to spiritualism, must bend to the necessities of the body, to be at the same time the servant of, and served by, the bodily organs. According to general opinion the great imaginers are found only in the first two classes, which is, in the strict sense of the word, true; in the full sense of the word false. As long as it remains "outline," or even "fixed," the constructive imagination can reign as supreme mistress. Objectified, it still rules, but shares its power with competitors; it avails nought without them, they can do nothing without it. What deceives us is the fact that we see it no longer in the open. Here the imaginative stroke resembles those powerful streams of water that must be imprisoned in a complicated network of canals and ramifications varying in shape and in diameter before bursting forth in multiple jets and in liquid architecture.[148] II THE IMAGINATIVE TYPE. Let us try now, by way of conclusion, to present to the reader a picture of the whole of the imaginative life in all its degrees. If we consider the human mind principally under its intellectual aspect--i.e., insofar as it knows and thinks, deducting its emotions and voluntary activity--the observation of individuals distinguishes some very clear varieties of mentality. First, those of a "positive" or realistic turn of mind, living chiefly on the external world, on what is perceived and what is immediately deducible therefrom--alien or inimical to vain fancy; some of them flat, limited, of the earth earthy; others, men of action, energetic but limited by real things. Second, abstract minds, "quintessence abstractors," with whom the internal life is dominant in the form of combinations of concepts. They have a schematic representation of the world, reduced to a hierarchy of general ideas, noted by symbols. Such are the pure mathematicians, the pure metaphysicians. If these two tendencies exist together, or, as happens, are grafted one on the other, without anything to counterbalance them, the abstract spirit attains its perfect form.