Note * — Chapter XXXII · The Imagination

We may now turn to consider that other set of characters which have been confused with these communicative conditions, and which may justifiably be taken as defining a special field for those interested in the values of experience. There are two ways in which impulses may be organised; by exclusion and by inclusion, by synthesis and by elimination. Although every coherent state of mind depends upon both, it is permissible to contrast experiences which win stability and order through a narrowing of the response with those which widen it. A very great deal of poetry and art is content with the full, ordered development of comparatively special and limited experiences, with a definite emotion, for example, Sorrow, Joy, Pride, or a definite attitude, Love, Indignation, Admiration, Hope, or with a specific mood, Melancholy, Optimism or Longing. And such art has its own value and its place in human affairs. No one will quarrel with ‘Break, break, break,’ or with the Coronach or with Rose Aylmer or with Love’s Philosophy,* although clearly they are limited and exclusive. But they are not the greatest kind of poetry; we do not expect from them what we find in the Ode to the Nightingale, in Proud Maisie, in Sir Patrick Spens, in The Definition of Love or in the Nocturnall upon S. Lucie’s Day.