In its most abnormally exalted developments love may give rise to a fetichistic adoration of objects connected with the beloved which is psychologically analogous to the cults of religion. And the same tendency to select some single representation or object as vehicle of a psychical state, which is so manifest in the case of these high-strung emotions, may also be noticed in connection with feelings of lower intensity. In all departments of psychical life we may thus find a corroboration of the assertion, which was already expressed by Hemsterhuis in his speculations on our desires, which always aim at “un grand nombre d’idées dans le plus petit espace de temps possible.”[158] We need only consult our memories—for example, of landscapes we have seen—to find that the emotional element of the recollection, our admiration, is always closely bound up with some single feature of the impression. We may indeed be able to revive the visual image itself by allowing the mind’s eye gradually to pass along all its details. But the subjective feelings in which we appropriated the impression and made it our own will not be resuscitated until we arrive at one particular detail—a single tree, or perhaps a figure—and concentrate our attention upon that. The experience of this law of emotional mechanics teaches us to look with a selective attention on everything of which we wish to preserve a vivid remembrance. The more emotional our intuition of a given whole, the greater is always our desire to concentrate it upon a single impression which supports and reconstitutes the original vision. The art of arranging great complexes of intellectual and emotional elements around single focal points, so to speak, may undoubtedly be greatly developed by exercise. But the procedure itself does not presuppose any conscious intention. It occurs almost as an instinctive expedient for escaping the incompatibility between diffused intellectual attention and strong feeling. On purely psychological grounds, therefore, we may adopt the aphorism of Teufelsdröckh: “For the soul, of its own unity, always gives unity to whatever it looks on with love.”[159]