The mimetic character of the imaginative consciousness tends to express itself in the presentation of artistic forms and materials. When words can be used in a more fresh and primitive way so that they strike with the force of sights and sounds, when tones of sound and colors of paint and the carven shape all strike the sensibilities with an undeniable force of data in and of themselves, compelling the observer into an attitude of attention, all this imitates the way experience itself in its deepest character strikes upon the door of consciousness and clamors for entrance. These are like the initial ways in which the world forces itself upon the self and thrusts the self into decision and choice. The presence of genuine mimesis in art is marked by the persistence with which the work demands attention and compels valuation even though it is but vaguely understood.

Underlying these conceptions of mimesis are certain presuppositions concerning the nature of primary human experience which require some exposition before the main argument can proceed. Experience is not seen, as it is in classical rationalism, as presenting us initially with clear and distinct objects simply located in space and registering their character, movements, and changes on the tabula rasa of an uninvolved intellect. Neither is primary experience understood according to the attitude of modern empiricism in which nothing is thought to be received other than signals of sensory qualities producing their responses in the appropriate sense organs. Primary feelings of the world come neither as a collection of clearly known objects (houses, trees, implements, etc.) nor a collection of isolated and neutral sensory qualities. In contrast to all this, primary data are data of a self involved in environing processes and powers.