Here is the source of the opposition between the abstract and
analytical head, deadly to the sense of unity, and the warm immediate
heart that unifies life with the aid of the imagination--an opposition
that assumes so many forms from Rousseau to Bergson. The Rousseauist
always betrays himself by arraigning in some form or other, “the false
secondary power by which we multiply distinctions.” One should indeed
remember that there were obscurantists before Rousseau. Pascal also
arrays the heart against the head; but his heart is at the farthest
remove from that of Rousseau; it stands for a superrational perception.
Christians like Pascal may indulge with comparative impunity in a
certain amount of obscurantism. For they have submitted to a tradition
that supplies them with distinctions between good and evil and at the
same time controls their imagination. But for the individualist who
has broken with tradition to deny his head in the name of his heart is
a deadly peril. He above all persons should insist that the power by
which we multiply distinctions, though secondary, is not false--that
the intellect, of however little avail in itself, is invaluable when
working in coöperation with the imagination in the service of either
inner or outer perception. It is only through the analytical head and
its keen discriminations that the individualist can determine whether
the unity and infinitude towards which his imagination is reaching (and
it is only through the imagination that one can have the sense of unity
and infinitude) is real or merely chimerical. Need I add that in making
these distinctions between imagination, intellect, feeling, etc.,
I am not attempting to divide man up into more or less watertight
compartments, into hard and fast “faculties,” but merely to express,
however imperfectly, certain obscure and profound facts of experience?