Note † — Chapter XXIII · Tolstoy’s Infection Theory

Opposed to him is the poet who “described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity. . . .” His is “a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgment ever awake, and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement†.” As so often, Coleridge drops the invaluable hint almost inadvertently. The wholeness of the mind in the creative moment is the essential consideration, the free participation in the evocation of the experience of all the impulses, conscious or unconscious, relevant to it, without suppressions or restrictions. As we have seen, this completeness or wholeness is the rarest and the most difficult condition required for supreme communicative ability. How it works we have also seen, and if this is, as doubtless it must be, what Tolstoy meant by sincerity, however queer some of his tests for it were, we have found yet another indication of how great his contribution to critical theory, under happier circumstances, might have been.