conscious or unconscious choice of images. In the essay which we have
already quoted
[Footnote: _Studies and Appreciations_, p. 216.]
Lewis Gates remarks:

"In every artist there is a definite mental bias, a definite spiritual
organization and play of instincts, which results in large measure from
the common life of his day and generation, and which represents this
life--makes it potent--within the individuality of the artist. This
so-called 'acquired constitution of the life of the soul'--it has been
described by Professor Dilthey with noteworthy acuteness and
thoroughness--determines in some measure the contents of the artist's
mind, for it determines his interests, and therefore the sensations and
perceptions that he captures and automatically stores up. It guides him in
his judgments of worth, in his instinctive likes and dislikes as regards
conduct and character, and controls in large measure the play of his
imagination as he shapes the action of his drama or epic and the destinies
of his heroes. Its prejudices interfiltrate throughout the molecules of
his entire moral and mental life, and give to each image and idea some
slight shade of attractiveness or repulsiveness, so that when the artist's
spirit is at work under the stress of feeling, weaving into the fabric of
a poem the competing images and ideas in his consciousness, certain ideas
and images come more readily and others lag behind, and the resulting work
of art gets a colour and an emotional tone and suggestions of value that
subtly reflect the genius of the age."


_6. "Imagist" Verse_

Such a conception of the association of images as reflecting not only this