INTELLECT, EMOTION, IMAGINATION, AND RELATED QUALITIES. Another main
question in judging any book concerns the union which it shows: (1) of the
Intellectual faculty, that which enables the author to understand and
control his material and present it with directness and clearness; and (2)
of the Emotion, which gives warmth, enthusiasm, and appealing human power.
The relative proportions of these two faculties vary greatly in books of
different sorts. Exposition (as in most essays) cannot as a rule be
permeated with so much emotion as narration or, certainly, as lyric poetry.
In a great book the relation of the two faculties will of course properly
correspond to form and spirit. Largely a matter of Emotion is the Personal
Sympathy of the author for his characters, while Intellect has a large
share in Dramatic Sympathy, whereby the author enters truly into the
situations and feelings of any character, whether he personally likes him
or not. Largely made up of Emotion are: (1) true Sentiment, which is fine
feeling of any sort, and which should not degenerate into Sentimentalism
(exaggerated tender feeling); (2) Humor, the instinctive sense for that
which is amusing; and (3) the sense for Pathos. Pathos differs from Tragedy
in that Tragedy (whether in a drama or elsewhere) is the suffering of
persons who are able to struggle against it, Pathos the suffering of those
persons (children, for instance) who are merely helpless victims.
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