Against
this theory two main objections may be urged: (1) As, on Burke's own
showing, the objects of the imagination, at least as far as poetry is
concerned, are, and must be, presented first to the _mind_, it is (in
the strictest sense of the term) preposterous to attribute their power
over us to a purely muscular operation (2) The argument, taken by
itself, is barely relevant to the matter in hand. Even where a physical
basis can be proved--as it can in the case of music, painting, and
sculpture (and of poetry, so far as rhythm and harmony are an essential
element of it) it is extravagant to maintain that the physiologist or
the "psycho physicist" can explain the whole, or even the greater part,
of what has to be explained Beyond the fraction of information that
purely physical facts can give us, a vast field must be left to
intellectual and imaginative association. And that is the province not
of physiology but of psychology, and of what the Germans call
_Aesthetik_ This province, however, is but seldom entered by Burke.
What, then, was it that drove Burke to a position so markedly at
variance with the idealism of his later years? In all probability it
was his rooted suspicion of reasoning as a deliberate and conscious
process.
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